I recently saw an article on the NYTimes where the author downloaded all the information that Facebook has on him and shared his thoughts on it. I had never noticed that download option to be honest so I thought of giving it a try and seeing what Facebook has on me.
The download link was around 700MB and includes a folder with several subfolders and files. I opened first the images and videos and found a couple that I had totally forgotten about and that I’m glad are in a private group 😆 then I opened the index file which is a raw data set of all your FB account and there were some shocking findings there.
Under interests, I had “Ecovillage, Hot Girls Wanted, Banque du Liban”. I have no idea where that “Hot Girls Wanted” came from and I couldn’t even find a section to edit my interests. The pokes, even though irrelevant, only show pokes dating back to 2017 (I was a big poker when that trend started 😂), and I also found several weird pages I apparently liked at some point and some apps I downloaded, such as “Sweepz Sweepstakes” (no idea what that is) and “Food Fight!”.
The “other” section has unfortunately the largest amount of groups & pages I’ve liked and interacted with for some reason, while the “apps” section had all the apps I’ve used on my phones and signed in using Facebook. What I didn’t understand though is how all my contacts got to Facebook, noting that I didn’t sync any of my phones to my FB account. I am not sure if there’s some link between my Google account or one of my phones. On the iPhone, there’s no Contacts & calendar option under Facebook and on my Android I am not syncing any contacts to Facebook.
For those interested in downloading all their FB info, go to Settings and click on “Download a copy of your Facebook data”.