Everything about Facebook and its privacy policy

Recently, I took a glance at the Facebook's privacy policy and it's concerning. Concerning to the extent where I even wanted to delete my Facebook account!

Here's a bitter, unfortunate truth that's hard to accept: Deleting your Facebook account is of no use.

To show you relevant ads, we use data that advertisers and other partners provide to us about your activity on their websites and apps, as well as certain offline interactions, such as purchases. For example, we may show you an ad for a shirt based on your visit to a clothing website. We never sell your data.

Excerpt from Facebook.com  

How exactly can this affect you?

If you don't understand what's the quoted text, then you aren't alone. There many users, users who have no idea about these settings or people who barely knew how to use a smartphone completely. And this is how Facebook has a lot of our data, including personal and sensitive information like biographical, geological and other data you've provided and not provided.

What data is collected from me by Facebook?

Facebook has listed all the various types of data collected from us in their privacy policy. Here's what Facebook collects from us: ( From their Privacy Policy - Simplified )

• Information and content you provide. This can include information in or about the content that you provide (e.g. metadata), such as the location of a photo or the date a file was created. It can also include what you see through features that we provide, such as our camera, so we can do things such as suggest masks and filters that you might like, or give you tips on using camera formats.

  • Data with special protections: You can choose to provide information in your Facebook profile fields or life events about your religious views, political views, who you are "interested in" or your health. This and other information (such as racial or ethnic origin, philosophical beliefs or trade union membership) could be subject to special protections under the laws of your country.
• Networks and connections. We collect information about the people, Pages, accounts, hashtags and groups that you are connected to and how you interact with them across our Products, such as people you communicate with the most or groups that you are part of. We also collect contact information if you choose to upload, sync or import it from a device (such as an address book or call log or SMS log history).
• Your usage. We collect information about how you use our Products, such as the types of content that you view or engage with, the features you use, the actions you take, the people or accounts you interact with and the time, frequency and duration of your activities. We also collect information about how you use features such as our camera.
• Information about transactions made on our Products. If you use our Products for purchases or other financial transactions (such as when you make a purchase in a game or make a donation), we collect information about the purchase or transaction like payment information, other account and authentication information, and billing, delivery and contact details.
• Things others do and information they provide about you. This can include information about you, such as when others share or comment on a photo of you, send a message to you or upload, sync or import your contact information.
  
  

Device Information:

• Device attributes: information such as the operating system, hardware and software versions, battery level, signal strength, available storage space, browser type, app and file names and types, and plugins.
• Device operations: information about operations and behaviours performed on the device, such as whether a window is in the foreground or background, or mouse movements (which can help distinguish humans from bots).
• Identifiers: unique identifiers, device IDs and other identifiers, such as from games, apps or accounts that you use, and Family Device IDs (or other identifiers unique to Facebook Company Products associated with the same device or account).
• Device signals: Bluetooth signals, information about nearby Wi-Fi access points, beacons and mobile phone masts.
• Data from device settings: information you allow us to receive through device settings that you turn on, such as access to your GPS location, camera or photos.
• Network and connections: information such as the name of your mobile operator or ISP, language, time zone, mobile phone number, IP address, connection speed and, in some cases, information about other devices that are nearby or on your network, so we can do things such as help you stream a video from your phone to your TV.
• Cookie data: data from cookies stored on your device, including cookie IDs and settings.

Information from partners.

• Advertisers, app developers and publishers can send us information through Facebook Business tools that they use, including our social plugins (such as the Like button), Facebook Login, our APIs and SDKs, or the Facebook pixel. 
  
  
• These partners provide information about your activities off Facebook – including information about your device, websites you visit, purchases you make, the ads you see and how you use their services – whether or not you have a Facebook account or are logged in to Facebook. 
  
  
• For example, a game developer could use our API to tell us what games you play, or a business could tell us about a purchase you made in its shop.
  
  
• We also receive information about your online and offline actions and purchases from third-party data providers who have the rights to provide us with your information.

How can they do this? Well, you've agreed to their terms and conditions, privacy policies and other legal agreements when you create a Facebook account or you visit their's or their partner's site.

There's a myth that persists about Facebook : They listen or even watch us without our permission. However, that's not true. 

There had been reported incidents of products ads popping out in various sites and apps, obviously including Facebook, after you had talked about it with someone. It may not be a coincidence for most of the times.

Let me make it clear it for you. Jump back to the example Facebook used to explain you about how it gets information from it's partners ( A game developer could use our API to tell us what games you play, or a business could tell us about a purchase you made in its shop ).

If you make a purchase with some business, then they'll have your contact information. Most of us, including me, would have opted for memberships and loyalty services. These shops sell your data, (Not exactly your personal information but your interests and demographics info), to third party data collectors, who sell your data to companies to show relevant ads. 

This is not only confined to Facebook but many companies are following this.

And ad revenue is the main integral part that powers the free internet. Free internet is a scam, you don't get anything for free. You give your personal data to read those free useless articles about celebrities, see a dog dancing video and what not!

Should you ditch Facebook?

Probably not. Look, Facebook is, so far the known company that came in limelight for these privacy flags. There had been lot of bugs that only makes Facebook image more worse.

Facebook isn't the only company to collect lot of data. Take Google, it has billions of users, and their personal information. Even though we have heard news about these companies handling huge amounts of user data, we still don't ditch them, because we still trust them. We know that they are ethical companies and will continue to be ethical.

These articles based on their data handling and misuse of data did not help these companies to stop their growing user base and stop them from earning huge revenues.

Coming back to Google, they handle more data than Facebook. The reason why Facebook has come into limelight is that they too serve ads that are too relevant and relatable, which seems fishy, even after reading this article. 

Google has a lot of apps and we use their apps daily. So, we presume that the reason why ads served on their products are based on our search history, recommendations and etcetera. It is partially true. But some other websites that uses Google business tools like Adsense, can serve your relevant ads based on data bought from third party data collectors.

There's no way to get complete privacy on the internet. But you can adjust your privacy settings so as to make you more comfortable using their products.

Can you remove your data from Facebook?

Fortunately and obviously, you can remove your data. Check Facebook's official guide in managing your privacy here.

You can see Off-Facebook activity and see who and when have they collect your data.

SPOILER ALERT: IT'S SCARY! 

It's pretty much every website I've visited and I've felt horrendous. You can choose to delete your data, but there are limitations. You can't stop Facebook from collecting your data. 

However deleting your account can do the magic for you, to a certain extent. You'll still be tracked by various 3rd party advertisers and partners of Facebook and send information about you to Facebook. But here's the catch, there won't be any personal identifiers.

It may be used to help advertisers target a huge audience, instead of specific people. Even if there isn't any personal identifiers, There's still some material that will be left even after deleting your personal account.

There's no use of deleting your personal account if you still have accounts of Facebook's other products like Instagram, Oculus and Whatsapp. There are still trackers that can be inserted on your device after installing their apps.

Long story short, we can say that these practices are used by many ad serving companies, which is not limited to Facebook.

DISCLAIMER:

I've done a lot of research from the internet and checked Facebook's privacy policy and all the information here are from those highly trusted authoritative sources. This article also contains personal and general opinions and facts.

This article is not made to defame any company. This is purely for educational purposes.