We are all aware of the contract that we sign with Zuckerberg when we register to access Facebook: in exchange for all the wonderful communication platform made available, we give up our passions, our preferences and share what we like . Facebook, in fact, is a commercial company, which makes profits and earns money by selling information to companies and getting paid to display advertising in a targeted way, to people who may be interested.
As seen in several other articles, Facebook provides many tools to protect privacy and it is therefore possible to manage in a very capillary way what our friends see about us on Facebook .
By configuring the options in a certain way it is also possible to keep the profile completely private, even if it is only an illusion, because if it is true that you can make sure that other people cannot find us, it is also true that Facebook controls us always and knows us well, knowing everything about us .
To begin with, Facebook records and stores the actions that are done on the pages of companies, for example on the CocaCola page. If we like one of these pages, our name will appear in the company's sales listings and our friends will know that we liked that page. Everything people do, both on Facebook directly, and on sites that have a Facebook Like button, reveals information.
While data collection seems something to be taken for granted, the complex and ingenious operation that Facebook manages to do with the information collected by us is to correlate it and obtain cross-references between very precise tastes and preferences that become fundamental when it is necessary to address a certain type of advertisement to people who may be affected. The important point is that Facebook is able to track and control people even if you do not enter the Facebook site, thanks to the vast surveillance network on sites that contain the code that makes the Like button appear.
Wanting to make a list of everything Facebook is able to know about people we can say that:
- He knows where we are going, thanks to the Facebook apps for smartphones and mobile phones with the location service.
- You know which sites we visit, both because almost everyone has a Like or login button to log in with a Facebook account, and because Facebook is able to spy on the history of computers.
- Facebook knows our financial situation, because even if we do not publish joys or concerns regarding our earnings and work, it is able to memorize the online purchases we make, know where we live, how much we can travel, if we go to the gym, we go to the center commercial often, if we go to concerts etc.
- Facebook knows how long it takes to write a state and how many times we write and then rethinks it, because everything we do on Facebook is tracked.
- Facebook knows which apps we use.
- Facebook knows if we're sad or down
- Facebook can use other great apps it owns such as Instagram and Whatsapp to get lots of other information even from those who do not use Facebook.
- Facebook knows who we are from our photos and where our face appears thanks to its facial recognition.
In the Facebook Help Center where this list is found, it is however written that the data of the different categories are saved for different periods of time, therefore not all data will be available from the beginning, from the day of registration. No information or deleted content will be found, because it is deleted from the Facebook server and that this list can be modified and updated over time.
To find where our data is stored and stored, almost indelibly, on Facebook you need to look at:
- The personal diary page, the first and most obvious place to find every bit of information that refers to us and everything we have published on the site.
- Inbox : where you can find all the personal messages sent and received.
Note that in the incoming messages section there is also the Other box full of Spam and messages from people who do not know or are not in the contacts.
- Personal information page that contains all the contact info: name, surname, address, telephone number, email and also studies done, sex, sentimental status, political party, religious orientation, professional skills and occupations.
The Information page should at least be visible only to close friends.
- Activity log which is the history of everything that is done on Facebook, where you can also review the things you liked and shared and the research done.
READ ALSO: Facebook sees everything we do
To check all the preferences registered on Facebook just go to the page www.facebook.com/ads/preferences, where you can view all the things you "liked" plus other interests extracted on the basis of what is shared. Precisely, preferences are made up of topics based on specific "likes" and also on the categories to which the liked pages belong and on the basis of the places where we have been. Also included are preferences that may be of interest to us based on Facebook activity.
For example, those who have liked the Navigaweb page will show a preference on the web and computer topic. Everything listed in this personal advertising profile is under our control and it is possible to remove, by clicking on the X that appears by placing the mouse over one of the boxes, some of the preferences registered by Facebook if we think they are not true or that they are wrong. In particular, among the preferences, you can also notice how Facebook knows everything about our political orientation, as can be seen in the Lifestyle and culture section .
To obtain a copy of part of your personal data, you can send a direct request to Facebook to download your personal data even if you no longer have access to your account or even without having an account.
As we have seen, there are also hidden Facebook data search pages that show us how this social network is capable of making correlations.
You can then try searches using these addresses where you just need to replace the user ID with ours or a friend's.
Places visited: www.facebook.com/search//places-checked-in
Events we were interested in: www.facebook.com/search//events
Commented photos: www.facebook.com/search//photos-commented
the Facebook videos we liked: www.facebook.com/search//videos-liked .
It's up to us to decide whether to use Facebook services (or those of Google or Apple or Amazon) and pay with our privacy, the important thing is to know what is shared and to be aware that our data is recorded and traced in every detail.
There are certainly many ways to limit the reach of Facebook's tentacles on the data to be sucked, but ultimately, the only way to recover privacy is really just to delete the Facebook account.
