A new survey says we are wary of social media sites for collating more private data than just our birth dates. Here's how to safeguard your privacy
Have you ever felt like you were living in an Orwellian nightmare? You remember speaking to your best friend about getting that bag you saw on Amazon, and the next time you're on Facebook, an ad for the bag pops up mysteriously on the site. What about that time you texted your mother about plants she could get for her garden? The next day, Facebook showed you an ad for an online nursery. Creepy, isn't it, how the social network seems to be following your every move?
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Most people seem to think so, anyway. A survey conducted by Quartz in July (the results were published earlier this month) showed that nearly 80 per cent of 1,600 respondents picked Facebook as the tech company they trusted least.
Parting with your data
Did you know that in the second quarter of 2017, Facebook earned over $9 billion in revenue from ads? That's where all the data collection comes in. Facebook primarily mines and uses your information to show you relevant targeted advertising. Cyber security expert Vijay Mukhi shares that very often, access to this information can lead to awkward situations. "Essentially, this means you have zero privacy. Some time ago, a friend was looking to purchase lingerie from an online platform; every second ad that flashed on her screen was of lingerie brands. If this happens at work, when people can see what you're doing on your desktop, it can get embarrassing. It might be a minor inconvenience, but it's still not something you want to have to deal with," he explains.
Advocate Rizwan Siddiquee, who deals with numerous cases of cyber crime, says that at another end, this availability of data could lead to a case of impersonation, where someone can create a profile that looks exactly like yours and pretend to be you. "This could cause a lot of emotional trauma to the individual whose profile is being impersonated, depending on how malicious the attack is," he says. He adds that intrusiveness is the price users of sites like Facebook and Google have to pay in exchange for the networks' free services and tools. "Users have to know to some extent that whatever information they are putting online will be mined. And Facebook makes this clear in its terms and conditions, when you agree to sign up to use the network. But no one has the time to read 20 pages of legalese, and so, we end up giving our consent without going into the specifics of what we're giving up."
What do you prefer?
We reached out to Facebook to find out just how much it knows about its users, as well as how its companies, WhatsApp and Instagram, tie into the data-mining process, but didn't receive a response. However, this is what they have to say about the topic in the ad preferences section: "We believe the ads you see across the Facebook family of apps and services should be useful and relevant to you. We use information from a few different sources, including those described below, to figure out which ads might be valuable to you."
If what you've read worries you, and you want to know how much of your life you've unwittingly parted with, Facebook has an Ad Preferences page in its Settings section (under the sub-section Ads), which lets you see what information the company possesses on you. Under the Your Information menu, you will find something called Your Category, where you will get a better idea of the extent to which Facebook can penetrate your life. For instance, it knows what kind of device you use (iOS, Android or Windows), the network you're on (3G or 4G), as well as more personal details such as whether you're a frequent traveller, an "engaged" shopper, and even your political leaning. All this is far more than a person would be able to glean about you from one meeting.
Apart from this, its algorithm also uses your location, friends, work and education history, and interests (recall the random pages you liked years ago?) to decide what kind of person you are. There are ways to get rid of some of these details, but remember that this won't stop the ads from appearing altogether. All it will do is make them more random.
Mukhi believes that taking any precaution is akin to getting on the Do Not Disturb registry. "What you end up doing is muting the messages. That doesn't mean you will stop receiving them completely. Facebook thrives off its ability to help businesses create targeted ads, so they're never going to stop collecting your data." He adds that there is always the added concern of hackers accessing the data. "It's simple. If a company has a lot of data, the only question is when it will get hacked. If you're concerned about your data falling in the wrong hands, the best thing to do is restrict your use of such sites as much as possible, or, even better, get off them completely."
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