What's in your copy of Facebook data?
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.
After unpacking my downloaded .zip file I have a folder, which takes nearly 800 MB on my disk space.
And here's the beggining of the story - index.html file
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.
Security section is so long that Firefox can't make a full-page screenshot.
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:
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:
Translate: "Facebook copied all my phone contacts. All of them."
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:
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:
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