# Facebook Kept 1,200 Page File On 24-Year



## Knowbody (Jul 5, 2011)

Facebook retains tons of data on its users, but exactly how much? Apparently, more than enough to fill a volume of "Atlas Shrugged."

A 24-year-old Austrian law student named Max Schrems asked Facebook to send him all the personal data it had on him; according to European privacy laws, anyone with a residence outside North America has the right to see all the personal data a company has on him or her.

Here's what Facebook sent Schrems: a CD filled with 1,222 PDF pages of data. The filelog, presented in a new YouTube video, included deleted private messages, deleted pokes, deleted relationships statuses, deleted friends, apps that your friends use, old chat conversations, past GPS coordinates, and so on.

That's a lot of data on a 24-year-old with 234 friends.

"In theory Facebook could read all of Max's Facebook messages," the video narrator says. "The content of these messages might interest advertisers who place customized ads. What Max writes his friends might one day interest the police, or hackers."

Of course, Facebook says it abides by a stringent privacy policy and gives you the option to customize who sees what-but apparently, Facebook itself is not included in the opt-out.

Schrems's findings actually prompted an audit into Facebook's Ireland operations back in October, though this is the first time the rest of us are seeing the magnitude of information Facebook has on us. Schrems now runs the site Europe Versus Facebook, which tracks his effort to make Facebook more transparent about how it uses personal data. If you're living in Europe-and oh how I wish I were right now-he teaches you how to request for access to all your Facebook data.

Yesterday, Facebook launched Facebook Timeline worldwide, which replaces your Facebook wall with a reverse-chronological "story" of your life. For more, see PCMag's Hands On With Facebook Timeline.

http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/none/291803-facebook-kept-1-200-page-file-on-24-year-old


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## Xtraneous (Oct 18, 2011)

Damn, I'm glad I don't use that s***.


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## PickleNose (Jul 11, 2009)

I reckon lots of people will someday regret their past internet activity. It was pretty easy to guess that Facebook might be a problem but honestly, most people don't aggressively and jealously guard their online privacy. "Social networking" is just begging for trouble.


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## ryobi (Jan 13, 2009)

Forums are probably begging for trouble too, but at some point you have to live your life...


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## Neutrino (Apr 11, 2011)

Wow. I knew it was bad, but not that bad...


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## Knowbody (Jul 5, 2011)

ryobi said:


> Forums are probably begging for trouble too, but at some point you have to live your life...


wouldn't it suck if at sometime in the future anyone would be able to find out what forum you posted on and what sn you used with just a few clicks of the mouse?

unless they do a refresh every few years whatever we post here stays here forever


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## luceo (Jan 29, 2011)

First of all, Facebook actually _needs_ to store all of these things. If they didn't store them in some kind of database, they wouldn't function. Essentially everything needs to be stored in a database in order for it to be retrieved and displayed on a web page. That's how the internet works.

Secondly, they aren't storing anything that you don't willingly give them. Try reading the fine print and you won't be so surprised.

Bottom line, be smart with how you use _any_ service. Or learn to stop caring.


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## ryobi (Jan 13, 2009)

luceo said:


> First of all, Facebook actually _needs_ to store all of these things. If they didn't store them in some kind of database, they wouldn't function. Essentially everything needs to be stored in a database in order for it to be retrieved and displayed on a web page. That's how the internet works.
> 
> Secondly, they aren't storing anything that you don't willingly give them. Try reading the fine print and you won't be so surprised.
> 
> Bottom line, be smart with how you use _any_ service. Or learn to stop caring.


Sometimes I don't care. Sometimes I care too much-lol:roll


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## Duke of Prunes (Jul 20, 2009)

They don't exactly ‘keep’ a ready-compiled document about every user, it's only available on request. While I disagree with their policy on data retention, the fact is that this story is not at all newsworthy.

It's common knowledge that Facebook don't delete anything, so if you don't want them to have 12,000 pages worth of information about you, don't post 12,000 pages worth of content on there. It's entirely possible to use Facebook without giving them your life story, or even near-anonymously if you really care that much.

There's probably more useful information about most people scattered around the internet on their various forum/shopping accounts than on their Facebook account.


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## PickleNose (Jul 11, 2009)

Duke of Prunes said:


> the fact is that this story is not at all newsworthy.
> 
> It's common knowledge that Facebook don't delete anything, so if you don't want them to have 12,000 pages worth of information about you, don't post 12,000 pages worth of content on there. It's entirely possible to use Facebook without giving them your life story, or even near-anonymously if you really care that much.


 There's only one problem with that. Representatives of Facebook have publicly stated that they believe "online anonymity needs to go away". That seems to leave little ambiguity as to what they're about. If you know someone has a particular agenda, you can look and see if they're doing anything that could eventually get them to where they want to go.

Anyway.

Almost nobody really reads fine print and every scribe who writes it damn well knows that.


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## intelligentsensory (Dec 19, 2011)

> The filelog, presented in a new YouTube video, included deleted private messages, deleted pokes, deleted relationships statuses, deleted friends, apps that your friends use, old chat conversations, past GPS coordinates, and so on.


 basically 1,200 pages of nothing important.


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## Johny (Dec 21, 2010)

Facebook: Documenting my social failure since 2004


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## lonelyjew (Jan 20, 2010)

luceo said:


> First of all, Facebook actually _needs_ to store all of these things. If they didn't store them in some kind of database, they wouldn't function. Essentially everything needs to be stored in a database in order for it to be retrieved and displayed on a web page. That's how the internet works.
> 
> Secondly, they aren't storing anything that you don't willingly give them. Try reading the fine print and you won't be so surprised.
> 
> Bottom line, be smart with how you use _any_ service. Or learn to stop caring.


Thank you. People love facebook for all of the services it provides and hate it for trying to make money. The whole outrage against facebook, imo, is absolutely ridiculous.


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## Knowbody (Jul 5, 2011)




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## PickleNose (Jul 11, 2009)

lonelyjew said:


> Thank you. People love facebook for all of the services it provides and hate it for trying to make money. The whole outrage against facebook, imo, is absolutely ridiculous.


 People love Facebook because it's idiotic and something has to be mind numbingly idiotic in order to appeal to the largest number of people with the LCD.

I don't care if they make money. But tracking a person's every move is anything but benign.


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## LainToWired (Nov 10, 2011)

Typical, Facebook is a police state surveillance operation. I won't trust it ever.


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## Ohhai (Oct 15, 2010)

luceo said:


> First of all, Facebook actually _needs_ to store all of these things. If they didn't store them in some kind of database, they wouldn't function.


There should be no need to keep removed messages after a certain amount of weeks/months after the user removing it, infact hosting costs for all that data would be alot less if they removed it, but as it's been said a million times, facebook doesn't care for privacy, and are more than willing to give your information out to authorities, which probably means clever social engineering will get you it as well.

Also possible for your **** to be sold to companies.


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## lonelyjew (Jan 20, 2010)

PickleNose said:


> People love Facebook because it's idiotic and something has to be mind numbingly idiotic in order to appeal to the largest number of people with the LCD.
> 
> I don't care if they make money. But tracking a person's every move is anything but benign.


They hardly track your every move. They keep the information you willingly give them, while on *their website, using their services*. Their use of user data to make money is hardly a secret from the public, and even though nobody actually reads the terms of service, it's in their. You don't like facebook PickleNose? Don't use it. If others don't like, it they certainly aren't being forced into it either.


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## PickleNose (Jul 11, 2009)

lonelyjew said:


> You don't like facebook PickleNose? Don't use it. If others don't like, it they certainly aren't being forced into it either.


 What part of the concept that things can change over time do you find so hard to understand?

And again, does the statement "Online anonymity needs to go away" sound at all ambiguous to you?


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## ivankaramazov (Aug 22, 2009)

lonelyjew said:


> They hardly track your every move. They keep the information you willingly give them, while on *their website, using their services*. Their use of user data to make money is hardly a secret from the public, and even though nobody actually reads the terms of service, it's in their. You don't like facebook PickleNose? Don't use it. If others don't like, it they certainly aren't being forced into it either.


I get the occasional email invite from somebody I know on facebook, and it's always packed full of the names of people I might know. Who incidentally I do. And it's not as simple as people who all work together, or went to the same school. These are people I've met in all walks of life. The only conclusion is that these people at one point searched for my name or email address. I'm not even on facebook, and they know who I am and who I know based on who has looked for me. C'mon now.

They never delete anything done by any user because it's always going to be useful. Unfortunately he second it become unprofitable it will be sold to the highest bidder, and once FB goes public that risk is increased 10 fold. There is a generation of people who will likely have their deepest secrets dumped into the wide open, and everyone will be standing around asking how it happened? I'll be able to sit back like you and say 'should have read the TOS' but we'll be the minority. I feel like one day this is going to get very, very ugly.


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## PickleNose (Jul 11, 2009)

^ Great post.


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## lonelyjew (Jan 20, 2010)

ivankaramazov said:


> I get the occasional email invite from somebody I know on facebook, and it's always packed full of the names of people I might know. Who incidentally I do. And it's not as simple as people who all work together, or went to the same school. These are people I've met in all walks of life. The only conclusion is that these people at one point searched for my name or email address. I'm not even on facebook, and they know who I am and who I know based on who has looked for me. C'mon now.
> 
> They never delete anything done by any user because it's always going to be useful. Unfortunately he second it become unprofitable it will be sold to the highest bidder, and once FB goes public that risk is increased 10 fold. There is a generation of people who will likely have their deepest secrets dumped into the wide open, and everyone will be standing around asking how it happened? I'll be able to sit back like you and say 'should have read the TOS' but we'll be the minority. I feel like one day this is going to get very, very ugly.


I'm confused, are you on Facebook or not? If not, you can blame your friends for obliging facebook to look through their email contacts, something they do not have to allow it to do. I do see what you're saying, but have you ever thought about what information is valuable, and what isn't? Facebook isn't selling specific details of peoples' lives, but bulk trends. There is no money to be made in releasing private messages from Joe Nobody, but plenty of money in seeing how many people list photography as an interest, and their demographics. Further, anyone who posts their "deepest darkest" secrets on facebook will get no sympathy from me if they should come to light, because they're complete idiots for putting anything of that sort on the internet in the first place.



PickleNose said:


> What part of the concept that things can change over time do you find so hard to understand?


You say this same tired line over and over. Can you give me a list of slippery slopes which were non fallacious, and actually happened?


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