I know a lot of people in the security industry, and I know a lot of people who enjoy Facebook. However, there's not much overlap between these groups. As someone who's in both groups, I'm an oddity. Many security experts either always steered clear of the social network or are currently advocating deleting it. I closely follow security topics and products such as antivirus utilities, and I also use Facebook, but carefully. I don't see any need to delete my Facebook account. But now that Facebook has made it so easy to download everything the social network has about me, I went ahead with that process. Perusing the resulting archive, I ran into some surprises, both positive and otherwise.
I've known for years that with Facebook, I'm not the customer, I'm the product. I keep my profile private except to friends. I don't post a lot in my visible profile, and not all of what I display is true. For example, while it's true that I studied Existentialism in college, I'm not actually a Pastafarian; I have not been "touched by his noodly appendage." I never wildly click links that seem shady. And I maintain a security suite that warns if a dangerous link gets past my radar.
Friends Till The End Book Download
Download Zip: https://urluso.com/2vEpFa
But being careful myself isn't enough. Sloppy security on the part of my friends can potentially make some of my information public. So I tightened up my settings to keep Facebook from sharing my data. I went all-out, choosing the option to totally disable the sharing platform. Facebook offered dire warnings about how doing so would disable my apps, and keep me from logging in using my Facebook credentials. I smiled and went ahead. Now I'm fine, right? Well, maybe.
Note that you'll have to supply your Facebook password twice during this process, because this is sensitive information. Facebook also warns that you should protect the downloaded data, as it contains sensitive material. Your best bet would be to encrypt the data when you're not actively studying it.
Clicking the Friends link got me a list of all my Facebook friends, sorted from newest to oldest. No surprise there! But scrolling down farther, I found a lot more. It also lists: Sent Friend Requests, Received Friend Requests, Declined Friend Requests, and Removed Friends. That's right. Facebook knows everybody you've unfriended, and ever friend request you've denied, or ignored.
At the tail end of the list, I found a couple other minor categories. I have exactly one Followee, meaning there's one semi-public figure that I follow without actually being FB friends. You may have more. Facebook's analysis of my friend collection places me in the Friend Peer Group called "Established Adult Life." Why? Perhaps for advertising?
If you haven't yet done it, scroll back to the top of this article and follow the instructions to download your own archive. Page through it, think about it, do your best to get past the poorly designed parts. The archive isn't just evidence for you of what Facebook has on you. You can also make it a useful resource, assuming it doesn't inspire you to simply delete Facebook.
Presuming you're keeping Facebook, I strongly advise that you bite the bullet and disable the platform that lets Facebook share your data. Yes, that means you give up your games and apps, those nasty little spies. And you must log in to websites using unique passwords. But these are good things! With these precautions, you can keep using Facebook and still keep (most of) your privacy. 2ff7e9595c
Comments