"We are not the customers of Facebook, we are the product." ~ Douglas Rushkoff
Are you one of the 533 million people whose phone numbers, emails, name and gender, date of birth, location, relationship status and employer were stolen from the technical geniuses at Facebook?You can find out at a website called Have I Been Pwned that lets you input your email and see whether it was stolen in any recent data breach.
Your information is gold to cybercriminals who use it to impersonate you or scam you into handing over login credentials. Of course, if they have it, so does China. And so does our NSA. This means they know where you live, your friends, your groups and organizations, your political beliefs, your religious beliefs, your relationships, your health concerns and your sleep patterns. They know it all. It even knows about you if you don't have a account.
Dylan Curran of The Guardian decided to find out what Facebook knows about him.
Facebook offers a similar option to download all your information. Mine was roughly 600MB, which is roughly 400,000 Word documents. This includes every message you’ve ever sent or been sent, every file you’ve ever sent or been sent, all the contacts in your phone, and all the audio messages you’ve ever sent or been sent.
Facebook stores what it thinks you might be interested in based off the things you’ve liked and what you and your friends talk about (I apparently like the topic “girl”). Somewhat pointlessly, they also store all the stickers you’ve ever sent on Facebook (I have no idea why they do this. It’s just a joke at this stage).
They also store every time you log in to Facebook, where you logged in from, what time, and from what device.
And they store all the applications you’ve ever had connected to your Facebook account, so they can guess I’m interested in politics and web and graphic design, that I was single between X and Y period with the installation of Tinder, and I got a HTC phone in November.
The data they collect includes tracking where you are, what applications you have installed, when you use them, what you use them for, access to your webcam and microphone at any time, your contacts, your emails, your calendar, your call history, the messages you send and receive, the files you download, the games you play, your photos and videos, your music, your search history, your browsing history, even what radio stations you listen to.
Facebook stores what it thinks you might be interested in based off the things you’ve liked and what you and your friends talk about (I apparently like the topic “girl”). Somewhat pointlessly, they also store all the stickers you’ve ever sent on Facebook (I have no idea why they do this. It’s just a joke at this stage).
They also store every time you log in to Facebook, where you logged in from, what time, and from what device.
And they store all the applications you’ve ever had connected to your Facebook account, so they can guess I’m interested in politics and web and graphic design, that I was single between X and Y period with the installation of Tinder, and I got a HTC phone in November.
The data they collect includes tracking where you are, what applications you have installed, when you use them, what you use them for, access to your webcam and microphone at any time, your contacts, your emails, your calendar, your call history, the messages you send and receive, the files you download, the games you play, your photos and videos, your music, your search history, your browsing history, even what radio stations you listen to.
For psychologists this data trove is an golden sandbox. Researchers have used and are currently using Facebook to learn:
- adults over age 65 who use it see a boost in cognitive function
- organ donation registration dramatically increased as a result of social media
- Facebook can cause people to change their health behaviors
Click here to see what Marc Zuckerberg knows about you.
Remember: Everything Marc knows, governments around the world know.
Remember: Everything Marc knows, governments around the world know.