Who knows us better than your own family, some people would say no-one, but in truth there is one set of people who know what we like, where we go, who we want to talk to and with , who we ignore, what excites us and what spurs us into action. You might not know these people but if you are a regular Facebook user they know you .
To find out how much and what Facebook knows, download your personal information from the General Account Settings. The process is simple enough, after clicking on the link, Facebook will send you an email with a link to a website, you will then need to enter your password. On doing this your personal account information is downloaded to your computer. It is in a zip file, so it will take another step to uncompress this file which can be done using Windows explorer or Mac OS.
The downloaded information contains a number of folders and a html file called index.html. Clicking on this file will open it in a browser. The information included contains all posts, messages, pokes, photographs as you would expect. It also includes a record of every time you logged in any ads you have clicked on your location when you logged in and what type of device you were using to login.
Facebook also categorises you under advertising topics or interests so that they can provide targeted advertising to your page,as they say themselves ” The best ads are those that are tailored to individuals based on how they and their friends interact and affiliate with the brands, artists, and businesses they care about.” Incidentaly it is not possible to opt out of facebook Advertising.
Looking at the list of ad topics you might wonder why Facebook has categorised you in this way. It appears that all these categories are ones that you have expressed interest in while on Facebook.
It seems that not only does Facebook know you better than your family it may also knows you better than yourself.
