The tech giant Facebook has been facing privacy concerns due to its company policies that are deemed highly intrusive by privacy experts. Mark Zuckerberg and his company have been monitoring its users from their favorite activities to our personal relationships and even our deepest secrets.
Here are some things Facebook knows about you that you may not be aware of. We will not be surprised if what you will find out may prompt you to delete your account in Facebook or other services it offers.
1. Your current location and those you visited in the past
By sharing "at the moment" posts, Facebook knows where exactly you are located and it even stores such information. This means that its system knows all the places you have been to, even years after such experience. Unfortunately, unlike Google's location feature, you cannot simply turn off Facebook.
Using the Facebook app, the company tracks you at all times, even when it is not being used. Although users may limit of even turn off the option to limit the Facebook's tracking feature, the social media network can still track you using your IP address, Wi-Fi, browsing habits, Bluetooth, posts you upload as well as the places you check into.
2. The SMS, MMS, and calls you made
Facebook saves everything about the SMS, MMS, and calls you made or sent and received, including the callers' names and phone numbers as well as the time, date, and duration of each call. It keeps these files for years.
However, Android devices were the only ones experiencing such extreme breach of privacy after Apple restricted access of third-party apps for such information. While Facebook denied getting access to Android users' communication logs without their permission, the social media giant will urge users to automatically agree to it by using its app.
3. Your sleeping pattern
Facebook knows your sleeping pattern, when you are awake or asleep. The Messenger app has features that detect whenever you are using the app. Anyone who knows how to write a code to check users' Messenger status can determine when others are online or offline and use this information to learn when they are asleep or awake.
4. The movements of your mouse cursor
Facebook also tracks users' mouse curser when they access the website on their personal computer. In 2018, during the US Congress investigations on Cambridge Analytica scandal, the Facebook said it tracks cursor movements to check whether the users are humans or bots. By doing so, Facebook also determines our interest, particularly with the ads.
5. Your pregnancy status
It is likely that Facebook knows when someone is pregnant or may become pregnant. Users then start seeing baby care products ads as advertisers begin to these women. While Facebook claimed to rarely use data from a woman's posts to determine if they are pregnant, research firm Ad Age said the company gave vague information about how it determines when a woman is pregnant.
Read also: Facebook Illinois $650 Settlement: 1.4 M Users Only Have 3-days Left to File Claims
6. Your love life and relationships
After analyzing billions of data for years, Facebook can accurately foretell the behavior of a couple, even before they officially post about their relationship status.
The sudden increase in engagements and comments between two people from an average of 1.53 posts per day 85 days before they become a couple to 1.67 posts per day just 12 days before they begin their relationship. Then, once they are officially together, things slow down a bit as they engage in person.
7. Your heartaches and breakups
Like in love life, Facebook can also predict when a couple is about to breakup, even before they realize it. Then both persons would start seeing dating site ads on your newsfeed. While they may patch things up, any of them may also choose to just click on the ads.
No, Facebook does not predict the breakup based on the couple's posts or how they communicate. Instead, it considers a relationship healthy if the couple has many mutual friends and if they are close to each other's close friends.
8. Your political ideology
Without revealing your political inclination, Facebook would know it through the apps or liked pages as well as by looking at your activities across all its platforms. It will then uses these data to know if you are a conservative, moderate, or liberal.
9. Your long lost relatives
Facebook is able to give suggestions on "people you may know" using your contacts, location, facial recognition technology as well as data from other apps. The Facebook friend suggestion works by recommending a user to someone he or she may be linked in one way or another. Thus, thousands have already found their long lost relatives or friends through Facebook.
10. Your mere existence
Despite millions of people have already deactivated their Facebook accounts or may have not used it at all due to privacy concerns, it does not mean they spared by its algorithm. Facebook has created a shadow profile for everyone who has friends and their extended friendship who use Facebook. These profiles, which only exist on Facebook's systems, are enhances when their friends upload their contacts. This is how it recommends friends when these people finally decided to create an account .
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Written by CJ Robles
