What's in your copy of Facebook data?

in deletefacebook •  7 years ago 

Did you ever think what do Facebook know about you?

A few days ago I downloaded a copy of my Facebook data. Contents of it are really shocking.

Screenshot of my Facebook copy folder properties
After unpacking my downloaded .zip file I have a folder, which takes nearly 800 MB on my disk space.

Screenshot of my Facebook copy folder contents

And here's the beggining of the story - index.html file
Screenshot my general information from Facebook
It's not everything - content of this site is much longer.

Let's go to messages - here you have every single received and sent message. Unencrypted. And these messages are scanned, maybe sometimes even read by real people.
Some fragment of my messages

Security section is so long that Firefox can't make a full-page screenshot.
List of my IP addresses

Apps section is really important for me. Apps connected with your account can check your, and sometimes even your friends data.

And here's very important thing: FACEBOOK DID NOTHING WITH APPS PERMISSION OVERTAKING
And I have some examples from my account like this:
Facebook account permissions taken by Pokémon: Magikarp Jump app
Facebook account permissions taken by Uber app
Facebook account permissions taken by Pocket app
While for some apps it's reasonable (Facebook friends importing on Discord etc.), then why do things like Magikarp Jump need my friends list? It's simple - this information can be sold to third-party analytics companies, like Cambridge Analytica.

Some Twitter users says, that their copy contains their contact list, phone call and SMS history:
Dylan McKay on Twitter: "Downloaded my facebook data as a ZIP file. Somehow it has my entire call history with my partner's mum"
Dylan McKay on Twitter: "a historical record of every single contact on my phone, including ones I no longer have"
Dylan McKay on Twitter: "metadata about every text message I've ever received or sent spoiler: I don't use messenger for SMS"
Dylan McKay on Twitter: "and the metadata of every cellular call I've ever made, including time and duration"

kataryna on Twitter: "Facebook skopiował z telefonu moje wszystkie kontakty telefoniczne. Wszyściutkie."
Translate: "Facebook copied all my phone contacts. All of them."

Milan Sameš on Twitter: "Myslel jsem, ze se me “problem” Facebook nijak netyka. Na mobilu ho nemam, na desktopu pres browser mrknu tak jednou za ctvrt roku a nic tam nikdy nepisu. Ale... presto se v mych stazenych datech z FB objevuji kontakty, ktere jsem si pridal na mobil minuly tyden. Ze by Whatsapp?"
Translate (amateur): "I thought that Facebook "problem" does not affect me. I don't have it on mobile, on desktop I check it out by a browser once a quarter of a year and I never write anything. But... in my downloaded data I discover my contacts which I added to my phone last week. How? By WhatsApp?"

And here is the most important thing for me - Advertisement Topics based on your interests:
My Facebook advertisement topics
Here you can find your interests guessed by Facebook. They are used to show you ads based on it.
How does it work? Just look at some of my interests from the list:

Donald Trump
Republican Party (United States)
Congress of the New Right (Polish Political Party)
Joseph Goebbels
Janusz Korwin-Mikke (Polish Politician)
LGBT community

These interests are used to show me ads, that will interest me.
And everyone can create a Facebook ad, that is choosing people by their political interests:
Targetting people by their political interests on Facebook ads
It's as simple as just clicking "check" next to the wanted target.
Using this, we could change people's mind by manipulating them with (fake) news.

I think that Facebook ad targetting by political interests is too dangerous to just give everyone access to it.
I think that copying all call and SMS/MMS history, and contact list to Facebook servers is shameful.
I think that it's the right time to stop.

Join the revolution. #DeleteFacebook

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!