2,2 billions of users (more than a third of the world’s population) are on Facebook. It seems I am the only one who is not using Facebook – at least not privately. I just don’t like how they handle the privacy of the very people they made them rich. However, an employee pitched in and opened an account – also to establish a fan site to show news about publishing and our books: http://on.fb.me/TvqDaK
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Once, more Facebook users have been deceived and stripped of their privacy due to the sloppiness or rather the greed of Facebook book owners including stockholders. Thanks to their greediness, app developers are allowed by FB to grab their customer’s internet footprints.
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Shocking What FB Knows About Users
Watching a documentary on German TV, I discovered how I could disable some of the items on the Facebook site. However, what was outrageous when I clicked on “Apps”: there were not only all social media sites our publishing company uses – but also apps that we never downloaded or used – maybe clicked on their websites once. And I am mentioning not even scheduling sites, such as Hootsuite etc. Clicking on these app symbols, I could see everything (I hope it was everything) they listed there. The good news: You can delete them – one after the other – unless you really need them. And don’t forget: you need to do this from time to time again. Posting or liking one of these social media sites or apps means: they will be then listed again on Facebook.
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How to Manage Your Privacy Settings
When you look at your Facebook page, there is a tiny, really tiny triangle on the right upper corner:
- Clicking on this triangle, a listing appears
- scroll down to “Settings”, click and
- you will see a new window, on the left click on “Apps”
… and you will be shocked how much of your Internet usage is shelved there.
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How to Find Out if You Are Victimized?
Facebook now placed an instruction on their “Help” section how users can check if their account has been compromised, selling info to Cambridge Analytica:
How can I tell if my info was SOLD by Facebook to Cambridge Analytica?
https://www.facebook.com/help/1873665312923476
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Mark Zuckerberg admitted mistakes. He speaks of breach of trust and announces stricter rules. “That was a big breach of trust. I’m sorry that this happened.” Fine. But he did not tell what or if something will ever change…
I don’t think so.
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Irish journalist Dylan Curran wrote for The Guardian
“Want to freak yourself out? I’m going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realizing it. The harvesting of our personal details goes far beyond what many of us could imagine. So I braced myself and had a look (see his Facebook account screenshot).
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It includes every message you’ve ever sent or been sent, every file you’ve ever sent or been sent, all the contacts in your phone, and all the audio messages you’ve ever sent or been sent.
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But it is not only Facebook who collected everything about you:
- Google knows where you’ve been
- Google knows everything you’ve ever searched – and deleted
- Google knows all the apps you use
- Google has all of your YouTube histories
- The data Google has on you can fill millions of Word documents
Google offers an option to download all of the data it stores about you.
I’ve requested to download it and the file is 5.5GB big, which is roughly 3m Word documents. Click on this link to see your own data: https://google.com/takeout
Facebook and Google can access your webcam and microphone!
The data they collect includes tracking where you are, what applications you have installed, when you use them, what you use them for, access to your webcam and microphone at any time, your contacts, your emails, your calendar, your call history, the messages you send and receive, the files you download, the games you play, your photos and videos, your music, your search history, your browsing history, even what radio stations you listen to.
Seems like all the government intelligence agencies should apply for a job at Facebook or Google. Makes their work much easier … just kidding.
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