Social media is a relatively new phenomenon. Facebook, the world’s largest social media site, is just 14 years old founded back in 2004. Whenever we come across something new, we sometimes have to learn lessons the hard way. Chances are very slim that you’ve ever read an online agreement in full when you’ve signed up for an app or service online. As a result, you may have agreed to share more than you really wanted to with the service you’ve signed up for. It would be nice if we could all trust the major platforms from taking stuff we don’t want to be shared using common sense, but Facebook is proving that’s not the case. The FTC has even launched an official investigation into Facebook for its information gathering practices. It even collects call and text data when users sign up for Facebook Messenger or Facebook Lite and agree to its terms of use (knowing most people won’t read it). All around, it might be a good idea to see how much information Facebook is gathering on you. If you want to check this out, here’s how.
- Open Facebook from a web browser on your computer or laptop
- Click on Settings
- At the bottom of the Settings menu, you will see Download a copy of your Facebook data
- Click it and download your data
- Review it to see what is being collected
To limit which apps can grab that information:
- Click on apps from the menu in the left pane
- Edit or delete each app you don’t want to share your data with
Always be careful of what you’re sharing online. It’s incredibly difficult to permanently delete the information and it may come back to haunt you. While it would be nice if we could trust the big tech companies, Facebook is proving that’s not something we can do until the government regulates it with laws and penalties.