What you need to know about what Facebook knows about you

Inspecting your own data can be a chilling experience

Most of us are aware that social media companies compile what we like, where we go and what we buy, and offers that up as a smorgasbord to advertising and media companies. It’s the price we pay to engage in social media.

So when the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, I began questioning how safe my account is. To do this, you can go to Settings and click on Request Your Archive. Facebook needs to compile this information and will send it to you in a downloadable format.

When you do get your Facebook data, it contains a huge number of files, which include: ads, apps, contact info, events, friends, messages, photos and videos, to name a few. Here are the ones that got my attention.

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This is a list of categories that Facebook thinks you’ll be interested in: mine included business, futurism, and the Republican Party. I’m not a republican. The bigger question is: is this a list of who Facebook thinks will pay to advertise to me?

Apps

This is a list of every app I’ve installed on Facebook. Most I recognise, like the The Boston Globe, Souq, Bloomberg. And then there is “Wittybunny,” who makes quizzes. Most of us have taken a quiz on Facebook at some point, usually something along the lines of “Which Harry Potter character are you?” It’s fun.

But I know nothing about Wittybunny, and despite a quick search online, I can’t find much either. I do find out that by authorising their app on Facebook, they gained access to my pictures, friends’ names and basic information. They say they will also save that information.

What this comes down to is: I don’t know anything about Wittybunny. That’s a problem. I don’t know what they do. I don’t know what data they have on me or what insights I may have provided them. Did they sell that information? If so, to whom?

Contact information

Facebook has the name and phone number of everyone on my contacts list. There are hundreds of names, numbers and emails. I transferred this data to a Word document. It’s 134 pages long. Sorry, everyone.

Messages

If there was ever a section that will convince you to delete Facebook, this is it. Every conversation I’ve ever had on Facebook, now dated and timestamped. Every. Single. One. It comes in a huge file. One conversation, with someone I only chat with a couple times a year, was over 28 pages long.

What to do next

At this point, you had to ask yourself this question: do I remain on Facebook or leave? If I choose to stay, there are steps I can take to better control who sees my data. The first thing to do is get control of those apps. You can control what access your Apps have by going to Settings and looking for the Apps’ link in the left-hand column. Each app has several permissions that need to be managed, although there is the option to delete the whole thing.

Deletion

You can also delete your account — and presumably your data — but Facebook doesn’t like this at all. They don’t want you to go. Serving up your data to advertisers is how they make their money, and they don’t want you taking yourself off the menu. Also, if you delete your account in anger without cleaning house first, your data will still be available. You have to manually revoke their access before you go. This is Facebook’s stated policy.

Can you be sure the data is gone? No. There is no way of knowing that Facebook hasn’t stored it away. Sure, it might be illegal to do that, but how will you ever know? At least one company we know about, Cambridge Analytica, lied about deleting data. That’s why I finally decided to delete Facebook, after taking the steps mentioned above.