Vladimir Rakhmanin | Deputy Online Editor
Facebook is slowly but surely overtaking Google for the title of ‘the official website of the Internet’. The site has over one billion registered users, and I’m sure everyone who has ever used the service is aware of how addictive it can be, something which I covered in a previous article. The merits of the site are up to debate – some say that the instantaneous nature of the service allows for quick communication, while others say that it is creating a generation better at socialising through a computer screen than in real life. What is undeniable however, is that is that the gargantuan corporation has reached the point where it holds a worrying amount of sensitive information about each user. The interesting thing about this is that European data protection law states that every individual has the right to get a copy of all the personal data a company hold about him or her – and this law of course applies to Facebook as well. As someone who has always been sceptical about the extent of our privacy, I decided to inquire further into this matter.
Facebook’s Help feature includes a page entitled ‘I would like to request access to my personal data stored by Facebook ‘, which can be found at the following link http://www.facebook.com/help/226281544049399/. After proceeding, I was taken to another page which gave me three options to choose from – I could either download a copy of my Facebook data, I could download an expanded archive, or I could check my Activity Log. Out of curiosity, I decided to look through all three options – however, the first two required a waiting period, so I joined the queue and decided to check the Activity Log in the meantime.
Am I the only one who didn’t realise the Activity Log existed? When Facebook made the switch to Timeline (ugh) I never took the time on that crucial little button. Once you’re there, it’s like the control centre for everything you’ve ever done while logged on to the site. The first thing I checked was the first ever posts that I had made/been tagged in. Pretty cringey stuff, I must admit, but what’s interesting is that all of this stuff is still there, from when I joined in early 2009. And I mean all of it. Every status update, every photo tag, every comment I had made on anyone’s status. Of course, the posts you could have seen through your regular timeline, but it is only through the Activity Log can you see the comments that you’ve made. Obviously, the stuff you’ve hidden from the timeline can be seen here as well.
Perhaps the most provocative thing about the Activity Log is the fact that it also tracks your search history. I have no idea how I missed this extremely controversial feature. Every time you search for a Facebook page, look for a group or creep on someone’s profile, Facebook knows. Not only does it know, it also stores that information in a rather convenient list. The worst part about this is that it is the last item in the sidebar, meaning that you have to expand the list of options to find it. It is, thankfully, fairly simple to delete this search history, but since not many people have heard of this function, I have a feeling that frapes are going to become a lot more interesting in the coming months.
By the time I had finished with the Activity Log, I received an e-mail that the other two files were available for download. The first one, the vanilla personal data zip file turned out to be quite substantial, weighing in at around 85 megabytes. The second zip file was a lot lighter, barely even breaking the one megabyte barrier.
Inside the first folder, I was presented with an offline html document with my profile picture. In the sidebar, you are given links to your photos, wall posts, etc. Nothing too surprising here – in fact, the information seems kind of hit-and-miss. For instance, the wall posts comprise of mostly things I wrote in 2012, with only a couple of things written in 2011, and even less before then. The interesting part about this folder is that all the messages I had ever written were included – even the ones I had deleted – and the events that I was invited to but did not join. Otherwise, I thought it was fairly nondescript.
The second folder is a bit more informative – it includes the IP addresses I had logged on from (I still don’t really know how you can get hacked if someone knows your IP address, but apparently it’s a concern) and the devices I had logged on from. Despite the sensitive information provided, it was also very patchy – I know that I log on to Facebook daily, and yet the folder only provided me with a few dates and times when I had logged on. Also, if you had made any in-app purchases on Facebook – Farmville, for instance (and if you have, shame on you) – then your credit card information will also be recorded and placed in this folder. If you had clicked on any ads during your time on Facebook, these will also be displayed (presumably this is how Facebook makes sure to provide each user with personalised ads depending on what their interests are).
Finally, there is the issue of phone numbers. New Facebook accounts must be linked with a phone number, which you can only later remove, the removal being a proactive choice on the part of the consumer. If you have not removed your phone number, then it will show up in the folder download. I’m not sure if the number stays in the system if you remove it, but unfortunately I do not have a way of verifying this as of this time.
Concerned about the gap of information in the folders I had received from Facebook. I decided to do some more research. I discovered that previously, in a campaign entitled Europe v Facebook, users would receive physical CD copies of their data, some featuring over 1000 pages per user. However, Facebook has since begun to take the easy way out, by replacing the CDs with an incomplete download, which is missing half of the categories of information that they currently hold. The Europe v Facebook campaign is currently in the process of lodging complaints by citing European law.
Regardless of the politics involved in this legal battle, it is clear that even from the incomplete amount of data I received that Facebook holds an outrageous amount of information from each user. Some people might argue about the triviality of this information – so what if someone finds out you’ve been looking through your friends photos? However, in an age where any company is susceptible to cyber-attacks (consider Anonymous hacking Sony’s PSN service) it is impermissible that this information be made public – telephone numbers, addresses, credit cards… It would be a disaster. The days when one could passively consume a product are over – we must always be on guard, making sure that sensitive information does not make its way into the company’s hands.
