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I Downloaded the Information That Facebook Has on Me. Yikes.

SPONSORED POST BY NYTIMES

When I downloaded a copy of my Facebook data last week, I didn’t expect to see much. My profile is sparse, I rarely post anything on the site, and I seldom click on ads. (I’m what some call a Facebook “lurker.”)

But when I opened my file, it was like opening Pandora’s box.

With a few clicks, I learned that about 500 advertisers — many that I had never heard of, like Bad Dad, a motorcycle parts store, and Space Jesus, an electronica band — had my contact information, which could include my email address, phone number and full name. Facebook also had my entire phone book, including the number to ring my apartment buzzer. The social network had even kept a permanent record of the roughly 100 people I had deleted from my friends list over the last 14 years, including my exes.

There was so much that Facebook knew about me — more than I wanted to know. But after looking at the totality of what the Silicon Valley company had obtained about yours truly, I decided to try to better understand how and why my data was collected and stored. I also sought to find out how much of my data could be removed.

How Facebook collects and treats personal information was central this week when Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, answered questions in Congress about data privacy and his responsibilities to users. During his testimony, Mr. Zuckerberg repeatedly said Facebook has a tool for downloading your data that “allows people to see and take out all the information they’ve put into Facebook.” (Those who want to download their own Facebook data can use this link.)

But that’s an overstatement. Most basic information, like my birthday, could not be deleted. More important, the pieces of data that I found objectionable, like the record of people I had unfriended, could not be removed from Facebook, either.

“They don’t delete anything, and that’s a general policy,” said Gabriel Weinberg, the founder of DuckDuckGo, which offers internet privacy tools. He added that data was kept around to eventually help brands serve targeted ads.

Beth Gautier, a Facebook spokeswoman, put it this way: “When you delete something, we remove it so it’s not visible or accessible on Facebook.” She added: “You can also delete your account whenever you want. It may take up to 90 days to delete all backups of data on our servers.”

Digging through your Facebook files is an exercise I highly recommend if you care about how your personal information is stored and used. Here’s what I learned.

Facebook Retains More Data Than We Think

When you download a copy of your Facebook data, you will see a folder containing multiple subfolders and files. The most important one is the “index” file, which is essentially a raw data set of your Facebook account, where you can click through your profile, friends list, timeline and messages, among other features.

One surprising part of my index file was a section called Contact Info. This contained the 764 names and phone numbers of everyone in my iPhone’s address book. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that Facebook had stored my entire phone book because I had uploaded it when setting up Facebook’s messaging app, Messenger.

This was unsettling. I had hoped Messenger would use my contacts list to find others who were also using the app so that I could connect with them easily — and hold on to the relevant contact information only for the people who were on Messenger. Yet Facebook kept the entire list, including the phone numbers for my car mechanic, my apartment door buzzer and a pizzeria.

This felt unnecessary, though Facebook holds on to your phone book partly to keep it synchronized with your contacts list on Messenger and to help find people who newly sign up for the messaging service. I opted to turn off synchronizing and deleted all my phone book entries.

My Facebook data also revealed how little the social network forgets. For instance, in addition to recording the exact date I signed up for Facebook in 2004, there was a record of when I deactivated Facebook in October 2010, only to reactivate it four days later — something I barely remember doing.

Facebook also kept a history of each time I opened Facebook over the last two years, including which device and web browser I used. On some days, it even logged my locations, like when I was at a hospital two years ago or when I visited Tokyo last year.

Facebook keeps a log of this data as a security measure to flag suspicious logins from unknown devices or locations, similar to how banks send a fraud alert when your credit card number is used in a suspicious location. This practice seemed reasonable, so I didn’t try to purge this information.

But what bothered me was the data that I had explicitly deleted but that lingered in plain sight. On my friends list, Facebook had a record of “Removed Friends,” a dossier of the 112 people I had removed along with the date I clicked the “Unfriend” button. Why should Facebook remember the people I’ve cut off from my life?

Facebook’s explanation was dissatisfying. The company said it might use my list of deleted friends so that those people did not appear in my feed with the feature “On This Day,” which resurfaces memories from years past to help people reminisce. I’d rather have the option to delete the list of deleted friends for good.

Your Facebook account keeps a record not only of ads you have clicked on, but also of advertisers that have your contact information, which can also be viewed in your archive.

The Ad Industry Has Eyes Everywhere

What Facebook retained about me isn’t remotely as creepy as the sheer number of advertisers that have my information in their databases. I found this out when I clicked on the Ads section in my Facebook file, which loaded a history of the dozen ads I had clicked on while browsing the social network.

Lower down, there was a section titled “Advertisers with your contact info,” followed by a list of roughly 500 brands, the overwhelming majority of which I had never interacted with. Some brands sounded obscure and sketchy — one was called “Microphone Check,” which turned out to be a radio show. Other brands were more familiar, like Victoria’s Secret Pink, Good Eggs or AARP.

Facebook said unfamiliar advertisers might appear on the list because they might have obtained my contact information from elsewhere, compiled it into a list of people they wanted to target and uploaded that list into Facebook. Brands can upload their customer lists into a tool called Custom Audiences, which helps them find those same people’s Facebook profiles to serve them ads.

Brands can obtain your information in many different ways. Those include:

■ Buying information from a data provider like Acxiom, which has amassed one of the world’s largest commercial databases on consumers. Brands can buy different types of customer data sets from a provider, like contact information for people who belong to a certain demographic, and take that information to Facebook to serve targeted ads, said Michael Priem, chief executive of Modern Impact, an advertising firm in Minneapolis.

Last month, Facebook announced that it was limiting its practice of allowing advertisers to target ads using information from third-party data brokers like Acxiom.

■ Using tracking technologies like web cookies and invisible pixels that load in your web browser to collect information about your browsing activities. There are many different trackers on the web, and Facebook offers 10 different trackers to help brands harvest your information, according to Ghostery, which offers privacy tools that block ads and trackers. The advertisers can take some pieces of data that they have collected with trackers and upload them into the Custom Audiences tool to serve ads to you on Facebook.

■ Getting your information in simpler ways, too. Someone you shared information with could share it with another entity. Your credit card loyalty program, for example, could share your information with a hotel chain, and that hotel chain could serve you ads on Facebook.

The upshot? Even a Facebook lurker, like myself, who has barely clicked on any digital ads can have personal information exposed to an enormous number of advertisers. This was not entirely surprising, but seeing the list of unfamiliar brands with my contact information in my Facebook file was a dose of reality.

I tried to contact some of these advertisers, like Very Important Puppets, a toymaker, to ask them about what they did with my data. They did not respond.

What About Google?

Let’s be clear: Facebook is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what information tech companies have collected on me.

Knowing this, I also downloaded copies of my Google data with a tool called Google Takeout. The data sets were exponentially larger than my Facebook data. For my personal email account alone, Google’s archive of my data measured eight gigabytes, enough to hold about 2,000 hours of music. By comparison, my Facebook data was about 650 megabytes, the equivalent of about 160 hours of music.

Here was the biggest surprise in what Google collected on me: In a folder labeled Ads, Google kept a history of many news articles I had read, like a Newsweek story about Apple employees walking into glass walls and a New York Times story about the editor of our Modern Love column. I didn’t click on ads for either of these stories, but the search giant logged them because the sites had loaded ads served by Google.

In another folder, labeled Android, Google had a record of apps I had opened on an Android phone since 2015, along with the date and time. This felt like an extraordinary level of detail.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On a brighter note, I downloaded an archive of my LinkedIn data. The data set was less than half a megabyte and contained exactly what I had expected: spreadsheets of my LinkedIn contacts and information I had added to my profile.

Yet that offered little solace. Be warned: Once you see the vast amount of data that has been collected about you, you won’t be able to unsee it.

I Downloaded the Information That Facebook Has on Me. Yikes.

How To Back Up Your Data For Free

April 14,2018 by Naveed zulfiqar pc/laptops

It’s surprising how few people take seriously the simple act of backing up their data. The reasons for this are many. Maybe they think that their laptop will never break, that everything is in the cloud anyway, or that it’s just too much hassle.

But, the truth is that a worrying number of people are one hard drive failure away from losing photos, videos, documents, or other important files that can never be replaced. Then there’s the rising threat of Ransomware infections, which encrypt data on a device and literally hold it to ransom until the users pays up. Even then, there’s no guarantee that the criminals will return their captives safely.

All of these stomach turning scenarios are avoidable though, if you take a small amount of time to back up your system on a regular basis.

To help you, we’ve put together this comprehensive guide which shows how to quickly back up your most important files. We’ll also lay out the various options for creating system backups of your whole PC or laptop, so that if the hard drive fails you can restore it back to just the way it was.

There’s also tips on how to backup mobile devices too, as much of the data we generate these days begins life under those brightly lit displays.

What kind of backup do I need?

There are a variety of backup styles on offer, so we break down the main types below. You’ll definitely want to pick one, but it’s wise to use multiple techniques and create multiple backups. This is to prevent a double disaster, by finding that the sole backup you’ve created is corrupted or didn’t cover what you thought it did.

Back up to an external hard drive

This is the simplest way to back up files from your PC. Just plug in a USB hard drive or flash drive and use Windows Explorer (File Explorer in Windows 8.1 and 10) to copy files from your computer to the removable drive.

It’s completely manual, but if you set a reminder to do it once per month and leave it copying while you’re off doing other things, it really doesn’t take much effort. Plus, once the backup is done and the drive is disconnected, it’s offline and safe from ransomware attacks.

Back up to the cloud

Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, pCloud and many other cloud storage services make it supremely easy to make backups of your files, and the free storage on offer when you sign up may just be enough. If it isn’t, you can pay a reasonable monthly or yearly fee to get a lot more storage.

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Just bear in mind that most cloud storage services sync files in a certain folder on your computer. This means if you delete a file in that folder, it will disappear from your online storage as well. Many services have an undelete feature (like a Recycle bin) so you can undo your mistake, but this might be limited to 30 days, so check!

A real benefit of cloud storage is that it creates a copy of your files in a physically separate location. They’re safe from flood, fire and theft. Cloud storage has lots of other advantages too: you can access the files from practically any computer with an internet connection and you can keep files in sync across multiple devices.

A full Windows PC or laptop backup

The first two methods back up certain files, but they’re not sufficient to get your PC or laptop up and running after a hard drive (or SSD) fails, or if your computer is stolen.

Making a backup of all the files on your hard drive is also known as a ‘disk image’ or ‘ghost image’, and you’ll need specialist software to do this. This needn’t be expensive though, as there are free and paid versions available.

Acronis True Image is one popular paid-for package, costing £45.99 per year to cover three PCs. Free options include Macrium Reflect and EasUS Disk Copy (free for hard drives up to 1TB).

Back up your smartphone camera roll

The best way to automatically back up your phone (or tablet’s) photos and videos is by using Google Photos. If you choose the ‘High quality’ option rather than ‘Original quality’ you get free, unlimited storage. That’s pretty much impossible to beat, and you can get the Google Photos app for a wide variety of devices.

For the other stuff stored on your mobile, such as contacts, notes and more, use the options available on the device.

For iPhones, iCloud is perfectly good, and 5GB should be enough free space, while on Android, your stuff is automatically backed up to Google (assuming you opt in).

Things to consider before backing up your PC

We’ll admit there’s no one-button solution for backing up all your devices at once, and that no form of backup is guaranteed for life.

Let’s say you backup all your photos to writable DVDs (not really necessary these days, but something you might have done in the past). It’s not going to be long before all the DVD drives are gone (few laptops have them any more), and there’s no way to get the photos off those discs.

The point is: it’s crucial to keep up with the times and make sure your files are moved off any device or platform that may not be accessible for much longer.

Another important point to consider is file versions. If you’re modifying a file because you’re working on it and developing it, it’s useful to be able to return to previous versions. Some backup software supports versioning, as do some online backup and cloud storage services, including Dropbox.

If you’re using software to backup your entire PC, be aware of the difference between incremental and full backups. Because only a subset of files changes between backups, there’s no need to regularly backup all 500GB, say. Only new files and those which have been modified need to be backed up – this is called incremental backup.

Yet another thing to watch out for is the ease of restoring backed up files. Some software and services allow you to get inside a backup and retrieve specific files, while others force you to restore the entire backup. This is why it’s important to read reviews of backup software.

What should I use to backup my Windows PC?

Traditionally, backups have been carried out locally to external hard drives, but you can also use optical discs such as DVD or Blu-ray, or a USB flash drive if you don’t have many large files. Ideally you should do this as well as using an online service.

Optical discs are cheap but hardly convenient. You can’t schedule a backup at night, for example, because you’ll have to be present to swap discs. And you can’t easily back up files from a phone or tablet to DVD or Blu-ray.

For archiving – storing data long term – you’ll also have to give consideration to data longevity because this varies from one type of media to another. A hard disk will probably be reliable for five years although the risk of accidental damage is greater, and for flash drives 10 years has been suggested, but reports vary.

Exactly how long data lasts on optical media depends on a number of factors such as whether the disk is writable or re-writable, the manufacturer, and the environment in which it’s stored. Under optimum conditions data should be readable for a century but there have been reports of discs being unreadable after just two years.

We somehow doubt that DVD and Blu-ray drives will be around to read such disks in 100 years, so it’s important to periodically write your archives to the latest media to ensure the files can be accessed by current hardware.

You should also give some thought to storage of your backup or archive media so that it isn’t lost in the event of a fire, flood or theft. Consider using a fireproof safe or, better still, storing it well away from your PC, perhaps in a friend’s house locally.

You can create local backups or archives with no special software at all, simply using Windows Explorer to copy files and folders to your backup media. However, dedicated backup software makes the job a lot easier and provides additional features too.

Which backup software is best for me?

First things first, Windows 10 has it’s own built-in backup feature. It’s called File History, and you can find it in Settings>Update & Security>Backup. This allows you to make regular, scheduled backups of your data onto an external drive.

The feature has a default setting of backing up any changes to your files once every hour, but this can be changed to other intervals if you prefer.

Windows 7 also has a built-in backup utility: Windows Backup and Restore. Which you’ll find if you type ‘backup’ into the Start menu search box.

Good backup software should be able to schedule backups so that they take place automatically at regular intervals. This is useful if you use an external drive which you leave connected to your computer. Just remember that if the disk isn’t attached to your PC then the backup will fail.

Similarly, scheduled backups aren’t helpful if you’re using optical disks as you’ll have to insert them manually.

On the subject of multiple discs, backup software will automatically split the files and folders so each disc’s full capacity is used. Depending on the software, it may produce a single file which can only be read by the program itself, or it may be readable by Windows natively.

Another common feature is support for incremental backups which we mentioned earlier. This way, only files that have changed since the last backup are copied to the media to reduce the time taken to copy data. Compression can also reduce the time taken as less data has to be written.

Some applications are able to back up ‘locked’ files, which are those that you’re working on during the backup process. Yet another thing to look out for is the ability to back up files and settings outside of your Documents, Photos, Music and Video folders, such as contacts, email, web browser bookmarks and even saved game files.

It’s crucial to ensure you’re backing up everything you need to return you to where you were in the event of a disk failure.

In fact, some backup software offers the ability to backup your entire hard disk (this is known as disk imaging). The advantage of this approach is that in the event of a disk crash, recovery won’t involve re-installing all your software and setting up all the Windows options and preferences.

Creating a disk image is great if you need to recover from a major incident such as complete hard disk failure. However, the convenience comes at a cost, namely that backing up will be more time consuming and you’ll need to use much higher capacity media – usually another hard disk of the same size.

Our recommendation – and you may disagree – is not to bother with disk imaging. After all, disk crashes are relatively rare occurrences and if the worst does happen, having to start again from a blank hard disk will give you the opportunity to install Windows afresh and leave behind the flotsam and jetsam that slows Windows down after a while.

What’s important is that you have all your files and settings backed up plus your application CDs and DVDs (and serial numbers) to hand.

Should I use a Cloud backup service?

The alternative to local backup is to back up online and – as with everything – there are pros and cons to this approach. The major benefit is that it’s easy. You don’t have to make any decisions about what type of media to use and you don’t have worry about media becoming obsolete.

You can also rest assured that your data is safe from fire and flood thanks to multiple redundancies where your data is stored in multiple places.

On the reverse side of the coin, there’s the risk that your backup service provider might go bust. There are no guarantees that even the largest companies will stay in business. Plus, there’s also the issue about the security of your data as it’s sent over the internet and stored on someone else’s servers.

It pays to choose a company with a good track record to look out for companies with ISO 27001 accreditation: the international standard for data security. This not only covers the potential loss of data, but also applies to unauthorised access.

The good news is that most reputable companies employ encryption so prying eyes can’t see the contents of your files when they leave your PC. This way there’s no risk to your data as it flows across the internet and even staff at the backup company will be unable to read your files because they are totally impregnable without a secret key which is known only to you.

Of course, the other drawback of the cloud is that making backups can take a long time. Speed is limited by your broadband connection. Don’t forget your quoted broadband speed is the download speed; the upload speed is typically much, much slower to the extent that backing up gigabytes and gigabytes of data becomes totally impractical and may even exceed your allowances for the month if you have a data cap.

You’ll have to work out whether the volume of files you want to backup is feasible on your particular broadband connection. It’s worth checking the small print scheduling backups so they run overnight.

Unless you live in a remote area of the UK, it’s certainly a good idea to incorporate online services as part of an overall backup strategy. Many of the main options offer free storage, albeit in limited quantities, but these can be increased through subscriptions, which start from around £5 per month.

If you’ve been reluctant to give backup the attention it deserves, we hope we’ve demonstrated that it needn’t be as time-consuming and expensive as you might have feared. And remember, that effort will be well worth it the moment that your hard disk fails, you suffer a virus attack, lose your laptop, or someone steals your pride and joy.

How To Back Up Your Data For Free

Today Topic:Facebook’s Data Changes Seem To Be Impacting Tinder Explain in simple,easy,quick,right now,fast,step-by-step,process,email list,#facebook,#data change,#blogging,#seo

Facebook’s Data Changes Seem To Be Impacting Tinder

13April,2018 BY NAVEED ZULFIQAR

(MENLO PARK, Calif.) — Some online daters had a little more trouble swiping right than normal earlier this week.

On Wednesday, hours after Facebook announced plans to restrict some data access by third-party apps, some Tinder users noticed problems with the app.

Tinder did not specify the reason for the outage in a statement to ABC News, citing only a “technical issue” and saying that the company “found a resolution and quickly resumed service.”

But it appears Facebook new policies may be to blame. Scott Steinberg, a trends expert for consulting firm TechSavvy, told ABC News that the problem was likely connected to the tightening of restrictions previously announced by Facebook.

He likened the previous flow of data from Facebook to certain third-party apps to “a pipeline of information that’s been flowing.” When that pipeline gets shut, “then it can create technical hiccups for apps that rely on the data.”

“Platforms like Facebook are taking more steps to protect the sanctity of users’ personal data,” Steinberg said, adding that individual users are likely not going to be dramatically impacted by changes.

“What happens is, from the developer perspective, it’s harder for them to pull information than it was in the past,” Steinberg said.

Tinder, like many apps, allows users to sign up using their Facebook accounts. In turn, the user agrees to allow the third-party app — in this case, Tinder — to take information off their Facebook profile and add it to their Tinder profile.

As a result, the user’s interests, including brands they may have favorited or public figures they’ve professed to being a fan of, will show up as their “interests” on their Tinder profile — in theory, allowing potential love matches to connect over common bonds.

In contrast, other apps take less information. A representative for Bumble, a similar online dating app, told ABC News that the company only uses the publicly available information from Facebook users’ profiles, including their names, profile pictures, and whatever school or employer the Facebook user features.

The representative said that because Bumble only relies on the public-facing portions of a profile, the app was not affected by the new Facebook changes.

That isn’t to say that yet-unaffected apps won’t be making changes in the coming weeks and months. Both Bumble and Hinge, another dating app, told ABC News that they are developing log-in options that will allow people to sign on to their apps apart from their Facebook accounts. As of now, the only way that people can sign up for their apps is by verifying themselves through Facebook.

The Facebook changes will apply to any number of third-party apps, not just ones dedicated to finding love in the digital age. Venmo, the popular digital wallet app that helps people share and request funds from friends, did not have a comment for ABC News at this time.

Steinberg said logins separate from Facebook are not the only ways that apps will have to change to adapt to the social network’s changes.

“I think what you’re going to see is more and more apps trying to get creative with ways to access information … that once they might have had much freer access to,” he said, citing interests or friends that some apps were able to access through Facebook data previously.

Today Topic:Facebook’s Data Changes Seem To Be Impacting Tinder Explain in simple,easy,quick,right now,fast,step-by-step,process,email list,#facebook,#data change,#blogging,#seo

What’s Facebook Doing at a Broadcasting Conference?

13April,2018 By Naveed Zulfiqar

During an NAB presentation Facebook ‘s News Partnerships team explains how publishers should work with algorithm changes.

Beth Loyd, who runs Facebook’s broadcast news partnerships, and Josh Mabry, who oversees the Journalism Project’s local news initiatives, explained to a roomful of digital media publishers gathered at today’s NAB Show what January’s Facebook Newsfeed changes will mean to their content.

The changes, Loyd said, are “very much a refocus for our entire company.”

Many in the room had concerns about their news content being pushed down or out of users’ newsfeeds, leading to a decrease in traffic at best and dissolution at worst. Publisher Little Things, which relied heavily on the algorithm, shut down in February.

The Facebook Newsfeed launched in 2006. Among its “values,” which Facebook codified in 2016, was “Friends and Family First.”

Loyd noted that Facebook’s own traffic is taking a hit. “We do expect overal time spent will go down,” she said.

The 40-minute presentation during Sunday’s session of the NAB Show in Las Vegas also provided solutions and re-iterated best practices for publishers, including:

Promote Meaningful Interactions: start conversations with stories and video.
Focus on Your Audience: post content that resonates; focus on community-building.
Avoid ‘Engagement Bait’: It’s not meaningful, and it will result in demotion of posts.

Engagement bait includes stories that aggressively ask viewers to vote, react or share. “Those posts will get demoted,” said Loyd, adding that advice, help and recommendation posts “are not adversely impacted.”

Loyd concluded her presentation by talking about the importance of Facebook Live and Facebook Watch. “We’re at NAB, and we can’t get by without talking about video,” said the veteran ABC News producer, who joined Facebook in 2014. Publishers are seeing four times more growth in daily watch time on Facebook Live than other Facebook video platforms, she said—and those posts get ten times as many comments as regular videos.

“Engaging, one-off viral videos have always done great in the Newsfeed, and will continue to do so,” she said.

One of the things Mabry and Loyd did not talk about in their presentation was the improper access of up to 87 million Facebook users’ personal information. “There’s a lot of stuff we’re not going to cover today,” said Mabry. “We’re going to stay focused on news and our roles.”

“Leadership will be in D.C. this week and there will be a lot of news there,” he added.