In the wake of reports of social media data being used to influence political campaigns, Philip Leone-Ganado downloads all the data Facebook has on him and asks how worried we should be.

In early January, I clicked on an advert for a shop selling reptiles. Around nine years ago, I attended a poetry reading at university. In 2011, I unfriended someone whose name I no longer recognise. 

I don’t remember any of this, but Facebook does – and much more besides.

Making up the more than 2.5 gigabytes of data that forms the digital footprint of my decade on the social media site is every single message I’ve sent or received, thousands of photos and videos I’ve posted or sent to friends, and a detailed list of adverts Facebook has decided I am interested in seeing, as well as mobile numbers from my phone’s contact list.

Following the scandal surrounding how Cambridge Analytica allegedly obtained the data of more than 50 million Facebook users without their consent, many have started asking questions on how much tech companies like Facebook know about us, and what they are doing with that information.

To find out a bit more, I downloaded a copy of the data Facebook holds on me, an option available to all users through the ‘Settings’ section of their account.

The archive, which took Facebook a few hours to prepare, contains everything I’ve explicitly shared – posts, videos, photos, messages – but also every page I’ve liked (around 250) and every group I’m a member of (around 100).

There is every friend I’ve ever added, and when, the friends I’ve removed, and all the requests I ignored or declined. On the basis of this, intriguingly, Facebook has defined my “friend peer group” as “starting adult life”.

The only way to maintain your privacy is to choose apps which do not collect data about you, or collect only minimal data

Apart from every advert I’ve clicked on in the last few months, the archive also contains a number of advert categories Facebook has associated with my account.

Some are quite understandable, like “arts and culture”, “Manchester United” and dozens of newspapers and magazines; others – like “Talladega Speedway” and “Nood Saibot” (apparently, a character from a video game I’ve never played) – are more baffling.

More concerning is a list of contacts exported from my phone, most of which are not friends on Facebook and none of which I actively added. Facebook says this feature, which is an opt-in but which I don’t recall selecting, is “used to make friend suggestions for you and others”.

Facebook has also logged my IP address – and with it, my location – every time I’ve accessed the site, as well as tracking all the websites and apps across the web that I’ve used my account to log into.

Nothing in the data – with the possible exception of my contact list – is particularly unexpected, but the overall picture remains a disconcerting one. 

One friend I speak to after they see their own data describes the effect as similar to reading an itemised record of every unhealthy fast-food meal you ever ate: you knew what you were doing, but it is still uncomfortable to find out that somebody was keeping track.

So how worried should we be about all this? According to Joseph Cannataci, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy: “Somewhere between very and extremely, verging on extremely.”

Prof. Cannataci, who has never had a personal Facebook account,  explained that the data I had seen created a complex picture of me which advertisers – or someone seeking to influence a political campaign – could use to pitch finely-targeted messages, and for which they were willing to pay top dollar.

“By understanding what the profile data tells you, you pitch the message slightly differently to different audiences,” he said. “What is interesting about the Cambridge Analytica case is that they didn’t have five different messages, they had thousands. The granularity of it is what is most valuable.

“This all makes it that much easier for you to be manipulated. It’s ultimately a question of autonomy: with the amount of data out there, we’re increasing the ammunition for politicians or advertisers to tell us what they think we want to hear. If we allow ourselves to be manipulated, we can kiss goodbye to our sense of autonomy.”

Of course, many social media users have long known that something like this was going on, and actively or not, decided it was a price they were ready to pay in exchange for what is undeniably an extremely useful platform.

The effects, however, could go much further. Asked about the safeguards in place to keep this data out of the hands of governments, Prof. Cannataci said he is not confident there are enough, and that companies can do much better than they are currently doing. 

So is deleting Facebook – as a growing online movement is suggesting – the only way to keep your data safe?

“It’s not only Facebook, but frankly yes,” Prof. Cannataci said. “The only way to maintain your privacy is to choose apps which do not collect data about you, or collect only minimal data. There are search engines which don’t gather data and messaging apps which are encrypted and where the encrypted message destroys itself after a few hours.

“If you don’t pay attention to your data, it’s tantamount to getting into a car and not putting on your seatbelt, or choosing a car without airbags. If you wouldn’t do that, why would you behave in an irresponsible way on the internet?”

What is the Cambridge Analytica scandal all about?

On March 17, the London Observer and The New York Times reported that UK-based data firm Cambridge Analytica had illegally obtained the personal data of 50 million Facebook members to influence the US presidential election in 2016.

The company allegedly used an app that collected the personal information not only of the people who downloaded it, but also of their friends. This data was used to create profiles on which targeted and tailor-made political adverts were then based.

Cambridge Analytica has denied using the data in the US election, and said it had deleted all the information after learning it did not adhere to data protection rules.

In the fallout of the scandal and amid inquiries in the US and UK, Facebook said earlier this week it would end its partnerships with several large data brokers who help advertisers target users.

It also adjusted its privacy settings, putting all settings on one page and making it easier to stop third-party apps from using personal information. Privacy settings had previously been spread over at least 20 screens.

Facebook said it had been working on the updates for some time but sped things up to appease users’ anger over how the company uses data and as lawmakers around the globe call for regulation.

The changes were announced ahead of a stringent EU data law which comes into force in May. It requires companies to give people a “right to portability” – to take their data with them – and imposes fines of up to four per cent of global revenue for companies breaking the law.

Lawmakers in the US and Britain are still clamouring for chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to explain how users’ data ended up in the hands of Cambridge Analytica. (Reporting by Reuters)