What DO Facebook and Google know?

[Editor's Post]

The HOT news of the moment is the "surprise!" discovery of what "private" corporations store about us. It's not "new news" its just that someone "woke up" and looked.

Such "looking" has been done in the past but has been swept away quickly. This time there is a bit of momentum and more people are "looking". It's a bit like discovering your Credit Score and checking in to make sure nothing is too horribly wrong.

The following 2 articles are pretty good and one has an excellent description of how to check what's out there. What is worth remembering is that this is just a portion of the data held by Facebook and Google. Similar data is held by every company you have ever dealt with on-line or who has a computerized interface. Corporations used to purge old information but these days, they rarely purge because even after you're dead, the data helps them target people around you and your surviving family and friends. This goes forever.

There is an aspect of the data that is "stagnant" and another that is "active". Letting "active data" become "stagnant" is about all you can hope for. The way to do this is:

• Remove unused or unnecessary stuff from your computer and phones
• Don't use or download stuff you don't need
• Drop all links to "cloud" storage or apps that "auto sync" to multiple devices
• Take a few hours to be bored and click on every option in your phone from Top to Bottom and verify the setting is what you want or are willing to tolerate. This exercise has to be repeated on every device and every time there is an update.
• Learn to turn on/off the DATA option on the phone/device
• Learn to turn on/off the WIFI option on the phone/device
• Clean out and delete old information

If you have a device that is already setup in good order with a reduced footprint, know that every time you use it it is logging data by the nano second. It isn't that you should not use such a device but rather that you be in control of the device and mindful of what is actually happening.

Beyond the settings, there is an enormous industry in the background that accumulates data from all sorts of other "public" or "permitted" or "open" systems. Anything that is Public Record is harvested. There is little or nothing you can do about these sources.

Control what you can.

Reveal what you want.

Protect those around you.

KimB Editor


References

1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/28/beware-the-smart-toaster-18-tips-for-surviving-the-surveillance-age
2. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/28/all-the-data-facebook-google-has-on-you-privacy