Facebook has long allowed you to download an archive of all the data the social network has on you, and HackerNoon’s Georges Abi-Heila decided to find out exactly what company knows about its users …
Abi-Heila reports (via TNW) that his archive was a 500MB zip file, and it included everything from the day he joined the service.
Some of the data is more detailed than you might expect.
Quite simply, Facebook never deletes anything. Unfriended friends, past relationships, former employers, previous names, address book: you name it.
I created my account Friday, September 14, 2007, at 10:59 am and all my actions have been recorded ever since. I feel that for the first time in history, 10 years of consistent human behavior have been meticulously gathered, stored & analyzed.
So Facebook knows where you were every time you took a photo uploaded to your wall, and session data tells it not just your location but also your IP address.
And it can recognize you whether or not you are tagged in a photo.
If you allowed Facebook access to your address book, it keeps that contact data forever.
Abi-Heila found that very few advertisers had access to any of his personal data – just 21. This is less surprising that it might seem given that it happens only if you grant permission. But advertisers can use a wide variety of anonymous data to target you.
You can download a copy of your own data by clicking the chevron top-right, then Settings. In a fairly unobvious place beneath the settings is a link to the download:
Facebook has recently come under scrutiny for the way that one supposed privacy feature actually makes your data available for analysis.
