Cambridge Analytica is a company that used the data extracted from Facebook accounts to develop a powerful software capable of influencing the elections of several countries.It did so through the creation of political ads The research has revealed that the company began collecting personal data from users in 2014 without their authorization.
The sudden discovery of privacy
Many people now wonder that (and how much) information about them is really in the hands of the social network.The campaign #deletefacebook , to unsubscribe from the platform is having a lot of resonance.that the world has now discovered that the big multinationals know a lot about us.Good morning, green sleeves.
However, the truth is that Facebook or Google do not steal any information from us .Everything they know about us, they know because we have given them our consent.? Only partially, because even reading the endless Terms of service, the implications are not always clear.
What we must be very clear about is that if something has existed digitally, it is still recoverable .Both Google and Facebook, but the same goes for other giants like Amazon, Apple or Microsoft, they have a package of data that make up our digital presence.
Have you had a disease and have you reported online ? It's in the package: Love problems? An extramarital affair? Photographs you wanted to forget? Pirate movies? Blackmail by email ? Have you looked for a new job behind the boss? Everything is still there, stored on the huge servers of those companies.
What does Facebook know about us?
The pages we visit can explain a lot about us.They can tell us where we live, our hobbies or our political position.Linking these navigation data with those that we freely leave on social networks has enormous value.That is why Facebook maintains a network of crawlers on several websites .Mozilla has just launched an extension for Firefox, which can prevent the social network from controlling the behavior of online users .
In any case, already within its same platform, Facebook collects a lot of information about what we do and think.To know everything we leave in the hands of Zuckerberg, we must go to 'Configuration' in our account.Alli will find a link to download our data .
Once we have obtained the file, we will be able to discover all the messages that we have sent or received and the contacts of our telephone (if we have authorized the synchronization), with also the call and message logs , at least for Android systems.
But Facebook also records the audio messages, the stickers we use, the topics that might interest us, if we are single or have been and for how long. The social network has created a system that profiles very precise and has great economic value .
The Washington Post has published a list of 98 data that Facebook collects to improve its advertising .If we are far from our family, if we consider having a child, how many square meters our house has , if we have a pet and many more.
Facebook also stores metadata of the images we upload.It knows the brand and model of the camera used, the exact place where the photo was taken and the IP address from where it was published.
Every time we access our account, Facebook records time and place, the IP, the browser and the device used.Finally, the company algorithm can identify the face of a person with 98% accuracy in less than five seconds .
Google knows more than Facebook
The deep integration of Google services on Android and the power of its services allows the Mountain View company to gather more information than any other operator.If we were curious to discover what Big G knows about us, we could download the file with all our data .The operation may require many hours or even days, but when the data is ready, a notification will be received by email.For older accounts, the file may exceed 5 gigabytes.
Position and movements .If you have a smartphone and Google location services have been enabled, the company knows where we were and for how long.a fairly accurate estimate of how we moved (car, feet, public transport).You can verify this information with this link.
Search and activities .Google remembers every search performed on each device associated with an account.You know what applications have been used, what pages have been visited.Also remember if we use Chrome in anonymous mode.It is possible to rediscover all the images searched, opened and downloaded.All this information can be consulted at this address.
If we use Google Calendar , the company knows what events we have added and in which we have actually participated.In fact, this information can be combined with the data generated by geolocation and Google Maps.
All the videos that we have searched and viewed are collected in a list to which we and the company have access (and third parties through controlled systems).One or more videos can be deleted.Also, here is a list of all applications that have access to our Google account .
The price to pay
Google, like Facebook, makes money selling advertising online .An activity that works best if everyone has a precise user/consumer profile.If you have never deactivated personalization of ads, you can find out here what kind of consumer you are according to the Californian colossus.
Surely Google knows a lot about its users , but it also offers numerous tools to control what data we want to be collected and how it will be used.Facebook in this sense is decidedly more opaque.
All this information, on the other hand, is the way we 'pay' Google for all its services.If Big G allowed us to block all its parameters, then it would have nothing to gain and a service like Gmail would really be free Realistically, a completely unreal eventuality.
Images | iStock
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