What Facebook knows about you

With more than 2.2 billion monthly active users, Facebook has stockpiled personal data on nearly one-third of the world’s population – a database that is the core of Facebook’s $40.65 billion business

What users submit
User’s profile includes name, date of birth, email address, location, job title,
education history, relatives and friends

Location tracking
Facebook knows where its users are, where they go, work, eat, shop, hotels and bars visited. Location-based social media surveillance has been used by law-enforcement
agencies

Offline purchases
Facebook buys data from third-party data brokers who monitor credit card spending. Pixel analytics tool tracks users after they log off from Facebook

Likes
Facebook’s algorithms use 98 data points to predict highly sensitive personal attributes – ethnicity, gender, relationship status, political affiliation

Online purchases
Users’ clicks on ads are tracked. Facebook’s cookies – embedded on third-party sites –
track both users and non-members

Metadata: Facebook harvests data from every text message user sends or receives, including deleted texts

“People You May Know”: Facebook encourages users to upload their entire address books to PYMK. Facebook uses this data to create shadow profiles

Shadow profiles: Dossiers of non-Facebook-user data compiled from contact lists that their friends, and friends of friends, have uploaded. Profiles can also contain
facial recognition data from photos and videos

Predictions: Data can predict future activity. Algorithm-data points include “users who are heavy buyers of beer, wine or spirits… pain relief products, and over-the-counter medications”

Sources: Facebook, USC Annenberg, Wired
Picture: Associated Press
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