What does Facebook know about you and do you need to delete it?

Deleting is more of a harm reduction because it will not affect the data gathered around you until that moment

Facebook has 2.6 billion monthly active users worldwide, and since we’ve all voluntarily provided information, many of you may be wondering how much the social network knows about them.

It’s not just the name, age, and education: some information is so personal that if you knew you would end up checking the social network’s privacy policies. Social networks are above all businesses. But how much does this business know about you? How can you control your privacy on Facebook?

> Check out: Facebook buys Giphy to integrate it into Instagram

Facebook has basic information about you

The dividing line between your personal and online life fades. Once registered, you provide simple information. You enter your name, email address, gender, and date of birth. Facebook also wants to know who you are friends with. This is how you connect with your family and your studies. Facebook asks about gender, current relationships, political and religious views, location, and whether you have a website or blog. Using this information you are categorized into a demographic group.

ABC1 is a key objective and involves middle-class professionals with good finances. Fortunately for Facebook, 75% of high-income people are on the social network.

Snapchat, a major Facebook rival, targets another audience, aged 18 to 34. Over 40% of Generation Z say they find it difficult to understand what content to consume so social networks are vital to manufacture companies, publishers, podcast services, and more. This is very important because Facebook can command higher prices. And in case you tag the location of friends in statuses and photos, the ads are more personalized.

Facebook knows what interests you

Your profile documents information about what you like about movies, music, and books. Your complexity shows the websites and articles you distribute. Facebook can tailor ads to your preferences.

In January 2015 a study showed that just 86 thousand likes on Facebook by users to predict the personalities of people with high accuracy. The study examined various aspects of personality such as compatibility, consciousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness. Everything you post on your or someone else’s time is recorded. This data is sold which is then used by third parties.

Facebook knows how you look

The social network can suggest your tags in photos posted by friends and vice versa. Want more? Facebook may also suggest tagging you in photos found on other people’s albums.

The face recognition project, Deep Face, compares two different images and identifies the same person in each of them regardless of lighting and angle. Deep Face works similarly to Face ID on iPhone. It tracks the distinctive features and symmetry of the face. It then creates a 9-layer neural network, a series of interconnected nodes such as brain synapses. With this structure, Deep Face can recommend labeling in various photos with accuracy of up to 97%.

A summary of what Facebook knows about you

If you have provided this information yourself then Facebook knows:

Name, e-mail address, gender, date of birth, relatives, friends, school, and university you attended, sexual preferences, marital status, religious views, occupation, where you live, if you have a political affiliation, website or blog address, music favorite, the books you read, the TV shows you follow, the phone number, the content of the messages you post on time, the messages of the people who post on your time, the websites you visit, the topics you talk about, and how you look.

Do you need to delete Facebook?

If you are looking for a permanent solution, the clear option remains to delete or deactivate the Facebook account, there is a difference between the two: the first completely deletes the account, while the second is a temporary measure of distance from the platform. But deleting is more of a harm reduction because it won’t affect the data gathered around you until that moment.