How to Find Out What Facebook Knows About You
Want to freak yourself out? I'm going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store well-nigh y'all without yous fifty-fifty realising information technology.
Google knows where y'all've been
Google stores your location (if you take location tracking turned on) every time you plough on your telephone. You can meet a timeline of where you've been from the very starting time twenty-four hours you lot started using Google on your phone.
Click on this link to see your own data: google.com/maps/timeline?…
Here is every place I have been in the last 12 months in Ireland. You tin see the fourth dimension of day that I was in the location and how long information technology took me to get to that location from my previous one.
Google knows everything y'all've ever searched – and deleted
Google stores search history across all your devices. That tin mean that, even if you delete your search history and telephone history on one device, information technology may nevertheless have data saved from other devices.
Click on this link to run across your own data: myactivity.google.com/myactivity
Google has an advertizing profile of you
Google creates an advertisement contour based on your information, including your location, gender, age, hobbies, career, interests, relationship condition, possible weight (need to lose 10lb in one day?) and income.
Click on this link to see your own information: google.com/settings/ads/
Google knows all the apps you use
Google stores data on every app and extension you utilize. They know how often you use them, where you use them, and who you use them to collaborate with. That means they know who you lot talk to on Facebook, what countries are you speaking with, what time yous go to sleep.
Click on this link to see your ain information: security.google.com/settings/secur…
Google has all of your YouTube history
Google stores all of your YouTube history, so they probably know whether yous're going to exist a parent soon, if yous're a conservative, if you're a progressive, if you're Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, if y'all're feeling depressed or suicidal, if you're anorexic …
Click on this link to run into your own information: youtube.com/feed/history/due south…
The information Google has on you can fill millions of Word documents
Google offers an selection to download all of the data it stores about you. I've requested to download information technology and the file is v.5GB big, which is roughly 3m Word documents.
This link includes your bookmarks, emails, contacts, your Google Drive files, all of the above information, your YouTube videos, the photos you lot've taken on your telephone, the businesses you've bought from, the products y'all've bought through Google …
They also have data from your calendar, your Google hangout sessions, your location history, the music you listen to, the Google books you've purchased, the Google groups you're in, the websites y'all've created, the phones you've owned, the pages you've shared, how many steps you walk in a day …
Click on this link to run into your own data: google.com/takeout
Facebook has reams and reams of data on you, too
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 yous've ever sent or been sent, every file you've e'er sent or been sent, all the contacts in your phone, and all the audio letters you've ever sent or been sent.
Click here to meet your information: https://www.facebook.com/aid/131112897028467
Facebook stores everything from your stickers to your login location
Facebook also 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 plainly like the topic "girl").
Somewhat pointlessly, they as well store all the stickers you've ever sent on Facebook (I have no idea why they practice this. It's merely a joke at this phase).
They likewise store every time you lot log in to Facebook, where y'all logged in from, what time, and from what device.
And they shop all the applications you've ever had connected to your Facebook business relationship, and so they tin approximate I'm interested in politics and spider web and graphic blueprint, that I was single between X and Y menstruum with the installation of Tinder, and I got a HTC telephone in Nov.
(Side annotation, if you have Windows 10 installed, this is a picture of just the privacy options with xvi dissimilar sub-menus, which have all of the options enabled by default when y'all install Windows x)
They tin can access your webcam and microphone
The information they collect includes tracking where y'all are, what applications yous take installed, when you use them, what you use them for, access to your webcam and microphone at whatsoever time, your contacts, your emails, your calendar, your call history, the letters 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 heed to.
Hither are some of the unlike ways Google gets your data
I got the Google Takeout certificate with all my information, and this is a breakup of all the different ways they get your data.
Here's the search history document, which has ninety,000 different entries, fifty-fifty showing the images I downloaded and the websites I accessed (I showed the Pirate Bay section to bear witness how much damage this data can do).
Google knows which events you attended, and when
Here's my Google Calendar broken down, showing all the events I've ever added, whether I really attended them, and what time I attended them at (this part is when I went for an interview for a marketing task, and what time I arrived).
And Google has information you deleted
This is my Google Drive, which includes files I explicitly deleted including my résumé, my monthly budget, and all the code, files and websites I've e'er made, and even my PGP private key, which I deleted, that I use to encrypt emails.
Google can know your workout routine
This is my Google Fit, which shows all of the steps I've ever taken, any time I walked anywhere, and all the times I've recorded any meditation/yoga/workouts I've done (I deleted this information and revoked Google Fit's permissions).
And they take years' worth of photos
This is all the photos ever taken with my phone, broken down by yr, and includes metadata of when and where I took the photos
Google has every email you ever sent
Every email I've ever sent, that's been sent to me, including the ones I deleted or were categorised as spam.
And there is more
I'll merely do a brusk summary of what'south in the thousands of files I received under my Google Activity.
Kickoff, every Google Advertising I've always viewed or clicked on, every app I've e'er launched or used and when I did information technology, every website I've ever visited and what fourth dimension I did it at, and every app I've ever installed or searched for.
They as well have every image I've always searched for and saved, every location I've ever searched for or clicked on, every news commodity I've e'er searched for or read, and every single Google search I've made since 2009. And so finally, every YouTube video I've ever searched for or viewed, since 2008.
This information has millions of nefarious uses. You lot say you're non a terrorist. Then how come you were googling Isis? Work at Google and y'all're suspicious of your wife? Perfect, just look up her location and search history for the last 10 years. Manage to proceeds admission to someone's Google account? Perfect, y'all take a chronological diary of everything that person has washed for the last 10 years.
This is one of the craziest things nigh the modernistic age. We would never let the authorities or a corporation put cameras/microphones in our homes or location trackers on united states of america. But nosotros just went ahead and did it ourselves because – to hell with information technology! – I want to sentinel cute domestic dog videos.
A explanation was corrected on 28 March 2018 to replace "privacy options in Facebook" with "privacy options in Windows x".
- Dylan Curran is a information consultant and spider web developer, who does all-encompassing research into spreading technical awareness and improving digital etiquette
- Sign up for the Guardian US opinion email
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/28/all-the-data-facebook-google-has-on-you-privacy
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