Off-Facebook activity

https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/

by bigbaguette • 6 years ago

710 380 6 years ago

wukerplank2• 6 years ago

Wow that's creepy. It lists apps where a) I didn't use FB login/signup and b) used a different email address to sign up. How do they cross-reference that to me? Hand how can I prevent that outside of their tools (which I assume still violate my privacy)?

randomchars• 6 years ago

I think they either:

- use Facebook pixel tracking on the site.

- hand over all of their user's email addresses to use for audience building.

Or most likely both. Creepy stuff indeed.

edf13• 6 years ago

Yep - all of above....

690 App/Sites for me! Not overly surprising really

StavrosK10• 6 years ago

I use uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger on my desktop and phone, as well as Blokada, and yet Facebook still had a bunch of app activity even though I never ever sign in to stuff using FB (or even gave the apps my email or any other piece of personal data).

I literally just opened the app, granted no permissions, used it a bit, and Facebook associated it with my account. What the fuck.

hobofan• 6 years ago

I'm pretty sure that 95% from the activity that is listed for me comes from the Facebook tracking pixel, that every website has to embed if they want to (effectively) advertise on Facebook.

subaru_shoe• 6 years ago

For starters you can delete your facebook account .

wukerplank2• 6 years ago

Fair point!

avh02• 6 years ago

I don't think that'd really be true, since they'd just have it stored in the background without you having a FB account (and wouldn't have the ability to see how bad it is)

not saying that's worth having an account though.

crashbunny2• 6 years ago

does that stop facebook from collecting data about you? I didn't think it did, and because you don't have an account it's not, or at least wasn't possible to control any privacy settings.

fretn• 6 years ago

which I did a couple of years ago. Now I have no idea what they know about me. I use adblock and friends, but I wonder how much data about me they still manage to gather

imoverclocked• 6 years ago

When I view this link, I can see no activity.

Here is my secret: I deleted my facebook account several years ago. (before it was cool)

I love how links like this are (successfully?) attempting to pull people back in.

akie2• 6 years ago

What you can do to prevent this is:

1) Install https://www.eff.org/privacybadger to prevent trackers from being loaded

2) Install https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode... to delete any cookies you might have accepted after a week time or so, which prevents the infinite gobbling-up of your data after innocently accepting a cookie once

3) Install the Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon containers to "separate" your browsing with these sites from the rest of your browsing. Links: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-cont... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitter-conta... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-contai... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amazon-contai...

Also, if you are creeped out by this, just imagine the amount of data Google has on you. I'm convinced they have way more, just by virtue of every website having Google Analytics installed.

crashbunny2• 6 years ago

Even before firefox containers, I used a dedicated profile for facebook only as well as using privacy badger and ublock origin. Facebook still collected data about me from external sites. I think mainly through my phone, possibly through linking phone number or email addresses.

adriand• 6 years ago

I found a mere four items in my activity list, all from several months ago, probably when I mistakenly used the wrong container or had uBlock turned off. It's nice to see all my anti-tracking software is working!

cmroanirgo4• 6 years ago

I use Firefox Containers to limit and logged in FB activity to that & never log in using FB other than FB website itself. I have no FB apps (including WhatsApp).

I've been running uMatrix for a few months.

My firefox tracking-prevention (similar to EFF's one, but probably not as good) is always using maximum privacy settings.

I still have a few sites appear... AND for websites I've never even visited (that I'm aware of, & I'm the only user of this machine)

There seems to be some serious fingerprinting going on, more than simple cookies.

StavrosK10• 6 years ago

Those are good, but they don't work for what the GP is talking about. I'm seeing games/apps associated with my FB account even though I never logged in to FB with them or gave them any info. I literally just opened the app and that activity was associated with my FB account.

I have no idea how they're doing this, since they didn't even request storage access (or I didn't give it). Can any Android developer here chime in on how an app can figure out my Facebook ID even though I don't even have Facebook installed on my phone and didn't give any sort of credential or access to the app?

tristador• 6 years ago

I thought Google Analytics had a decent privacy policy that would prevent Google from doing anything with GA data. But I remember some fuzzy wording like "your data" which could simply mean that Google considers GA data to be their data.

Has anyone done a good deep dive on what Google actually does with GA data?

fyfy18• 6 years ago

As an EU "customer" I'm rather surprised by this. There are services that I've signed up to since GDPR came into effect which I didn't get explicitly consent to do this. For example my business bank. Why would I give them permission to share data with my personal Facebook account? I will be digging into this more.

xg15• 6 years ago

Sounds like the activities view could be some good evidence to give to a data protection commissioner.

stiray2• 6 years ago

By far the worst thing are android phone applications (not only FB official app). They have their spyware bundled and can slurp from you the data which are normally unaccessible by web browser, from phone number, imei, mail addresses to all your contacts and there is almost nothing you can do except installing vpn based firewall (like NetGuard) and block all access and add permissions one by one for each url. This should just be illegal.

throwawaylolx7• 6 years ago

How can phone apps with no permissions get my phone number?

except installing vpn based firewall

So they can send the data instead?

joshspankit3• 6 years ago

Other commenters seem to have missed what you’re really saying here.

I’m on iPhone, and see apps listed where:

- I’ve never logged in on the web

- I’ve never clicked to open a link in a browser on-device

- Used a phone number to sign up that’s not associated with my fb account - Didn’t use email at all

cpv• 6 years ago

Some chat apps (like Viber and others) have Facebook SDK integrated in them, without any direct Facebook functionality people would use. Discovered after using NetgGuard, and seeing who is calling home, and not only home. (Why viber is making requests to graph.facebook.com anyway?)

Duolingo is a nice app for learning new languages, yet it might be using the same sdk, since it likes to call facebook.com domain.

Netflix is a good streaming service, but it has some option somewhere, which allows them to share data with others, and enabled by default. And yes, it's present in fb activity.

The list can go on...

There are developers who integrate dozens of SDKs, without any specific purpose for users, and not knowing what is happening. We need something like PrivacyBadger/ublockorigin for phones/laptops/routers/homes/cars. It's getting more than creepy.

And why would Facebook allow third-parties/businesses upload into FB info they have on their customers...

PS: analysis of how a simple menstrual tracking app is leaking data about the owner https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10693-no_body_s_business_but_min...

m14• 6 years ago

A bit weird that my Monzo seems to be sending data to Facebook?

Nextgrid14• 6 years ago

Could you say more or provide a screenshot? I’m very curious and concerned about this.

m14• 6 years ago

It just says <number> interactions were received from Monzo.

peteretep• 6 years ago

For Revolut, I have many many entries like:

ID 894103617218109 Event CUSTOM Received on 13 November 2019 at 09:51

The only event is "CUSTOM".

pirocks• 6 years ago

As far as I can tell almost every bank with an app is sending your email/advertising id/name/etc. to Facebook(+ other surveillance companies).

m14• 6 years ago

I have a couple of other bank accounts and none of the others seem to be sending data to Facebook.

threeseed2• 6 years ago

Not really.

They have the Facebook Pixel installed likely to do retargeting advertising when a person visits their website.

It's one of the most effective methods so it's very common to see it everywhere.

m14• 6 years ago

This is related to their app not their website.

buro92• 6 years ago

Hmm, that feels incident worthy.

My bank should send precisely zero things to advertising / marketing companies.

Have you raised it with their Help team? You should.

Unfortunately I cannot as I do not have a facebook account so cannot determine whether or not facebook hold data on me without creating an account.

Nextgrid14• 6 years ago

Might be worth a post on their community.

papln5• 6 years ago

You might (justifiably) not like it, and it might inspire you to boycott the business or plead for regulatory relief, but it's not an "incident" from their perspective to be intentionally doing what they do to run their business.

have_faith• 6 years ago

I saw HSBC

djaychela2• 6 years ago

I didn't see HSBC, but I did see Monzo - which I was surprised and disappointed by. I see no legitimate reason for them to be connecting me to my (disused aside from messenger because of friends' network effects) facebook account. Not impressed.

rovek• 6 years ago

Relevant but not exhaustive:

https://monzo.com/help/legal-stuff/information-facebook

oakesm92• 6 years ago

I have Monzo in my list too and downloaded the actual data. The only things listed are `ACTIVATE_APP` events. It doesn't seem to send any details to Facebook aside, from that you "activated" (opened) the app.

Still not ideal, but not completely terrible.

netsharc• 6 years ago

When I used to have https://lua.xprivacy.eu/ it used to prompt me a lot, saying "This app is calling this API, do you want to allow or deny? (or allow/deny for 1 minute or 10 minutes). The Facebook app would query what packages/apps are installed on the Android phone.

Yeah, Android devs, why is that an accessible API call?

For one thing this is how FB could figure out how popular their competitors like WhatsApp, Instagram or Snapchat were, and why they bought them, or tried to.

chrisjamesc• 6 years ago

If you want to disable facebook tracking out of facebook in the future, it's possible on this link: https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/future_activi...

EDIT: the link doesn't seem to work, so you can click on "Manage Future Activity" => "Manage Future Activity" in the popup => Disable "Future Off-Facebook Activity"

jannes7• 6 years ago

You might not want to disable this completely, because it can be a useful tool to identify data leaks (similar to Troy Hunt's haveibeenpwned.com).

My off-Facebook activity had zero entries and I want to keep it that way. If they ever associate something with me I want to be alerted to the fact.

dabbledash• 6 years ago

Mine had exactly one entry. And I won’t be doing business with that company anymore. No way am I disabling this. It’s too useful.

Vinnl• 6 years ago

One warning it gives me:

We will still receive future activities from companies and organisations you visit. These might be used for analytics and to improve our advertising systems, but will not be connected to your account.

(Translated from Dutch because for some reason Facebook figured I'd want this particular message in Dutch.)

bobsoap• 6 years ago

Extrapolation: "Account" here means the Facebook account created by you and visible to you; probably distinct from "Profile" in their lingo, which is all the data they have on you, of which most is invisible to you. If this is true, that's not an opt-out for data collection, just a choice to keep that info from showing in your account while merrily continuing to build your profile.

joshspankit3• 6 years ago

I mean, they’ve already been shown to keep every tiny nugget of data, this feels more like “we won’t give anyone else tools to see that it’s you” instead of “we’ll anonymize it sufficiently”

dougb5• 6 years ago

Before you disable it, the site warns you that "This will also prevent you from logging into apps and websites with Facebook because your activity will be disconnected from your account." This annoys me, because Facebook login is actually quite convenient, and they've gone and bundled it with lots of random third-party tracking. Nothing technically required them to do this -- they could surely offer it as a separate feature.

kpozin• 6 years ago

In my profile, they managed to obtain a `PURCHASE` event from Macy's -- for an in-person purchase at a physical store. Macy's has my email address and certainly linked it to my credit card number, but this is nonetheless seriously creepy.

I just tried to change my email address on Facebook and discovered that they canonicalize plus and dot variations in gmail.com addresses, and thus claim that the new email address is already associated with an account. Ended up having to create a completely new email alias on my own domain.

fabiandesimone• 6 years ago

This is likely based on an Offline Conversion which advertisers can bulk upload to FB

hatenberg• 6 years ago

Google has long bought credit card transactions and so probably have dozens of others. The root cause is that they are allowed to be sold

chippy• 6 years ago

are credit cards different from debit cards in this regard? Do some credit cards not sell your transactions?

zerotolerance• 6 years ago

I'd argue that the root cause is that they have any value whatsoever.

achecouter• 6 years ago

It’s better to not use the same email address everywhere. I use SimpleLogin to create email alias and it works great so far.

reaperducer8• 6 years ago

I just don't give my e-mail address to anyone. Anyone. Doctors, vets, especially retail stores.

I just tell them that I don't have one. On the very rate occasions anyone has balked I tell them I just moved and haven't set up my internet yet.

lawlessone• 6 years ago

, they managed to obtain a `PURCHASE` event from Macy's

interesting.. they could use that to predict earnings..

AznHisoka• 6 years ago

A lot of hedge funds purchase credit card data to do exactly that.

buckminster• 6 years ago

Predict? Facebook buys earnings data directly from payroll companies.

reaperducer8• 6 years ago

interesting.. they could use that to predict earnings..

A few years ago when Chipolte had its little food scare, Foursquare used its data to predict how much the restaurant chain's revenues would decline. IIRC, it was accurate to within 1%.

cosmie• 6 years ago

You don't even necessarily have to predict earnings. If you've ever connected to your financial account via a service like Plaid or it's ilk, that service has an API endpoint[1] they can call to neatly package up your income information. Sometimes it seems innocuous and unassuming for a one time use like identity verification, or to set up automated payments, or a one off transfer/disbursement. Other times it's for stuff like getting a consolidated view of your personal finance (i.e. a transaction aggregator such as Mint). But if you authenticate for anything, that service has access to everything.

And unless you rotate your financial passwords on a frequent basis, that access continues pretty much indefinitely[2].

[1] https://plaid.com/products/income/

[2] Not true for 100% of cases, but a general rule of thumb that's applicable to the majority of institutions they log into with your credentials.

agloeregrets• 6 years ago

I saw the same for Gap inc for a list of in-store purchases at Old Navy. Incredibly on the nose about how screwed privacy is going to be soon.

majewsky• 6 years ago

What do you mean, "soon"?

cat199• 6 years ago

old navy is owned by gap - not sure if this counts..

spunker540• 6 years ago

It’s not a situation where FB “managed to obtain”. It’s Macy’s directly uploading transactions in order to attribute purchases to their online ad campaigns. It uses email and name etc to match.

btrautsc• 6 years ago

I agree.

While its easy to point at Facebook and say "they are so creepy" - this sounds like the type of challenge every marketing department faces. "What is the attribution of X,Y,Z ad campaigns?"

Connecting purchase + email + 'where the ad happened' via social solves that.

artificial2• 6 years ago

Match backs? Or offline conversions? Looks like Zapier offers a match back service too.

mlb_hn• 6 years ago

Here's Facebook's business help link for how to upload and use point of sale and other offline data: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1142103235885551?id=5...

papln5• 6 years ago

That last part makes sense. If you want a different identity, you need to choose a different ID. Better to make you be more explicit about what you are trying to do (multiple accounts), then accidentally split accounts of people who aren't trying to do that.

CodiePetersen2• 6 years ago

Dot variations in Gmail all belong to you by default. That's a Gmail thing not a Facebook thing.

wrdalex3• 6 years ago

Revolut is sending data to them, too. 202 interactions for my account.

klausjensen• 6 years ago

That one surprised me as well.

Kiro• 6 years ago

Why is it surprising?

wasmitnetzen2• 6 years ago

And the last date they received information about me according to Facebook is the last date I used the app. Revolut mentions "Analytics providers" in their privacy policy as companies they are sharing my data with.

wrdalex3• 6 years ago

For me it seems there is a 3-day difference between the last time I've used the app (today) and the last time they shared data with facebook.

jannes7• 6 years ago

My off-facebook activity was empty. That's encouraging, because it looks like my countermeasures have been working:

- Fingerprinting resistance in Firefox (privacy.resistFingerprinting = true)

- First-party isolation in Firefox (privacy.firstparty.isolate = true)

- Blocking third-party cookies in Firefox (network.cookie.cookieBehavior = 1)

- Firefox container when I need to login to ad/tracking companies (Facebook, Google)

- uBlock Origin

- Cookie AutoDelete

- PiHole on my home network

onreact• 6 years ago

I don't think they will tell you the whole truth.

It's just like with Google history you can "delete".

They have the data stored for the authorities anyway.

They are required to do it by law (Patriot Act etc.)

throwawaylolx7• 6 years ago

I don't think they will tell you the whole truth.

This is true:

We receive more details and activity than what appears in your off-Facebook activity. For technical and accuracy reasons, we don’t show all the activity we’ve received. This includes things like information we’ve received when you’re not logged into Facebook, or when we can’t confirm that you’ve previously used Facebook on that device. We also don’t show details like the item you’ve added to your shopping cart.

https://www.facebook.com/help/2207256696182627

amitport• 6 years ago

Thanks for sharing

BTW, how does PiHole help in regards to anonymity?

dspillett• 6 years ago

how does PiHole help in regards to anonymity?

By blocking many advertisers tracking cookies (by blocking all access to those hosts via point the DNS result elsewhere) it reduces how far your information immediately spreads.

Far from massively effective because it does nothing to stop 1st party tracking and those 1st parties sharing further, or 3rd party cookies for new hosts not in the blocklists yet, but it can still help.

My use of PiHole isn't really an anonymity/tracking avoidance thing, my priorities in using it are avoiding ad network related annoyances like drive-by install attempts from less reputable (and/or hacked) networks, auto-playing audio, pop-ups/-unders, bandwidth waste (particularly from auto-playing video clips), occasional attempts to access microphone and/or camera, etc.

72deluxe• 6 years ago

Block requests to all of FB's domains in the hope that it can't load FB's scripts or buttons or "like" buttons; literally anything from FB as far as humanly possible.

jannes7• 6 years ago

It allows you to block the domains of known third-party tracking companies. However, this measure is going to become less effective over time with the increasing usage of first-party tracking.

abdusco• 6 years ago

How do you cope with constant reCAPTCHA prompts? I get prompted by Google when using search, because it thinks I'm a bot if I'm anonymous enough.

sefrost• 6 years ago

Have you tried using another search engine like DuckDuckGo?

ddalex3• 6 years ago

There should be an extension to automatically filter the reCAPTCHA-using sites out of the results of the search engines.

myhf• 6 years ago

You learn to derive some satisfaction from feeding it inaccurate labels.

ryandrake• 6 years ago

I had exactly one item, and it's a store I never shop at, so assuming they are actually showing all the information they "have" on me, I also feel encouraged that my opsec is sufficient.

I guess the only thing better would be 50 stores I never shop at. I might experiment in the future with finding ways to deliberately poison companies' data wells with incorrect information...

Amazonerh• 6 years ago

Out of all activities you listed, just 3rd party Cookie blocking and using any "login with Facebook" buttons would give the same result for Web. I don't think any of the activities you listed would prevent the data collected through apps though.

ynniv• 6 years ago

If you have a domain, you can give every service it’s own email address, ${service}@${domain}. They can try reporting that to Facebook, but unless someone understands that the entire domain is one account they won’t be able to correlate them.

hyyypr• 6 years ago

Thank you for this.

Infinitesimus• 6 years ago

Apparently Blind made the list. So much for 'anonymous'

pmlnr• 6 years ago

"just must log in to read this"

Can someone please share it?

cmroanirgo4• 6 years ago

It's a page for people with an account at FB that lists the 3rd party websites that have given information to FB.

Off-Facebook activity includes information that businesses and organisations share with us about your interactions with them, such as visiting their apps or websites.

It's creepy.

We receive more details and activity than what appears here. For technical and accuracy reasons, this list doesn't show all of the activity that we've received. Activity that is not shown includes information that we've received when you're not logged in to Facebook, or when we can't confirm that you've previously used Facebook on that device. It also includes details such as the item that you added to your shopping basket.

alien1993• 6 years ago

Seems like most of my data they got from apps on my Android phone, there was even an app that I just installed, opened and uninstalled in less then a minute without even logging in or anything.

How can I block them in the future?

rkachowski2• 6 years ago

set the "limit ad tracking" feature on your phone at the os level and the advertising id will become unavailable to everything. On Android this is Settings > Privacy > Advanced > Opt out

CreepyLife• 6 years ago

If Google and Facebook is ready to "show" these data, I wonder what and how much data they are hiding.

WA2• 6 years ago

Good point. I also wonder what the motivation behind this tool is.

Furthermore, I don't understand how any of this is GDPR-compliant.

sumedh• 6 years ago

Good point. I also wonder what the motivation behind this tool is.

Probably to tell regulators and politicians that "transparency is in our dna" we design tools to help users know who is interacting with their data

rypskar2• 6 years ago

INAL but will guess it is to make facebook GDPR-compliant. They show the data they have about us, but don't know if the apps that send the data to fb have used opt-in to enable sending data to fb. Maybe time to start writing emails to the companies who have uploaded our information without consent?

pjc504• 6 years ago

Hmm. I have no website activity listed - but seemingly every single Android game and a few other apps is sending "activity" to FB, despite me never using any feature to associate the two. This sounds like: https://privacyinternational.org/report/2647/how-apps-androi...

Any sensible way of stopping this?

afandian3• 6 years ago

Realise that you don't really need those android apps, or the google or facebook account. The utility and entertainment you get is half of surveillance capitalism ecosystem, and the other half is that they compile all this information about you.

I know it sounds preachy and it's not a conclusion most people will like. But, like fasting, going without something you like but don't really need does help you focus on what you really do need.

pjc504• 6 years ago

I don't actually care all that much and I like my luxuries. Do I "need" the Google account? No. Do I want to tell every person and business currently using it that I've changed email? Also no, that's a huge amount of work. Likewise for facebook, which is now down to once-a-day-ish use for coordination with a specific group of people whom I do not want to do the work of moving all of them off Facebook too.

Nextgrid14• 6 years ago

Blocking the entire Facebook ASN at the firewall/network level stops this. Google is a bit more tricky as they also have GCP so you can’t block their ASN without also blocking innocent services.

s_Hogg• 6 years ago

How does one do this?

Drew_2• 6 years ago

This is assuming that all data sharing to Facebook is done from the client which is obviously not true. If your desired service wants to share data with Facebook they can and will do so and there's nothing you can do about it except not use the service.

WA2• 6 years ago

From your link:

"Privacy International has tested both opt-outs and found that they had no discernible impact on the data sharing that we have described in this report."

So there's that. I wonder if any opt-out really helps. I think the best approach is still to use a good blocker such as uBlock Origin.

rkachowski2• 6 years ago

the Android advertising_id property and the ios IDFA (identifier for advertisers) are available to every app, and once an association against the id and your Facebook account is made further interactions can be attributed to your identity.

Both of these identifiers can be reset at any time via os features, making you appear as a new user (at least until fingerprinted or a new association with PII is made)

feintruled2• 6 years ago

Deliveroo has evidently been sending them all my orders. Or at least, there are as many 'interactions' as I have made orders. I don't log in via my Facebook so that is an unwelcome surprise.

Nextgrid14• 6 years ago

Yeah that is insane especially for a paid product.

lprd• 6 years ago

Same here. I had to recollect if I even signed up with Facebook. After checking my Deliveroo settings, it seems that my FB account isn't even connected. This is insane...

culturestate2• 6 years ago

Do you use the same e-mail address for both Deliveroo and Facebook?

If so, that could be how they matched you. Facebook lets businesses create custom retargeting audiences[1] from existing customers, and you can (obviously) include interaction data in order to segment e.g. frequent customers from occasional customers.

1. https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1472206006327390

dannyr3• 6 years ago

Man I feel hopeless.

I have not connected my Facebook account for over 90% of these sites/apps but they still sent my data to Facebook.

StavrosK10• 6 years ago

Same here. At least you can just turn it off on this page, and hopefully that will do something.

dannyr3• 6 years ago

Is is too late to change my email address on Facebook?

I'm assuming Facebook keeps a history of my email addresses that it can still associate it to my account.

Another option is to change all my email address at these sites.

afandian3• 6 years ago

Do you have the option to stop using those sites or using those vendors? At least now you have more data on the externalities of using each service.

dannyr3• 6 years ago

For some of them, I can stop.

But some are essential. Transferwise is not connected to my FB account but is sending data to Facebook.

gpvos3• 6 years ago

They probably just have a Like button on their website, which passes on data even if you don't click it. Use a request blocker like uBlock Origin.

Drew_2• 6 years ago

You don't need anything on your frontend to share data with Facebook. Facebook doesn't acquire information like what shirt you bought by putting a like button a page. Your clothing retailer is willfully sharing that information for marketing benefits.

kjakm• 6 years ago

What are the best ways to protect against this kind of tracking? I would argue it's probably better to keep a Facebook account so you can see what they're tracking and work to prevent it.

In my browser I'm running uBlock Origin, HTTPS Everywhere, and Privacy Badger. I'm guessing those will help quite a lot. However on an iPhone what can I do (as that's where a lot of this data seems to be coming from)?

jannes7• 6 years ago

Keep in mind that Facebook probably has a few unique identifiers from you apart from browser cookies:

- Email address

- Cell phone number (even if you only used it for 2FA)

- Credit card number (if you ever made a donation via Facebook or bought digital currency in a Facebook game)

- Advertising ID of your mobile device (can be reset in Android as well as iOS)

In order to avoid tracking, you have to make sure that none of these are known to Facebook and to other companies.

SCdF• 6 years ago

There is nothing on this page I was not aware of and intentionally linked (e.g. Strava).

So does this mean I am successfully stopping them from tracking websites I visit via tracking pixels / IP mapping / whatever other nefarious shit they do, or are they just not showing this information here?

gingerlime• 6 years ago

Is it just me, or is there no way to download activity details? I click on an activity, then there's a few examples and a link to download, but this leads to a generic "Download your information" page and I cannot see an entry for the app or off-facebook specifically...

How can I block it? some apps are on my iPhone, but I don't have the Facebook app on it (I do have messenger), and only used the apps on the phone. Aren't they isolated in some way?

orhanhh• 6 years ago

For downloading the data there is an option to download "Ads and Businesses" under "Information About You". I just downloaded it, and it includes all data that was shared.

However, the data only shows the source, timestamp and activity ID. The actual event data is not included..

padraic7a• 6 years ago

One thing I'm not clear on - when I click on Coinbase (just one example) I see the following under 'What you can do';

- View coinbase.com

- Turn off future activity from coinbase.com

- Give feedback about this activity

Does 'turn off' mean they won't share this information again, or that I won't be told about it again?

lioeters2• 6 years ago

I believe the vague wording is intentional, so they can just stop displaying it to you, while continuing to collect the data. It's like how "delete account" works.

loxs2• 6 years ago

It's not that vague, if you do click to disable you are taken to page that words it quite directly.

robteix• 6 years ago

Literally the first result in the list of companies that shared data about me with FB is my pharmacy. My pharmacy! That's just... wrong.

xyby2• 6 years ago

I am in Europe, so by law (GDPR) I have the right to make them delete all of this data.

How do I do so?

Also, I never consented to this being collected. How can their practice of collecting this type of data be GDPR compliant?

wasmitnetzen2• 6 years ago

You can disable to storage of this data on the linked page.

But I'd recommend going to the source: Read the privacy policy of each party delivering data and check if they mention it. I already sent a mail to the DPO of an app provider which shows up in this list and doesn't mentions Facebook in their privacy policy.

xyby2• 6 years ago

Even if the app had it in their privacy policy, that would not mean it is legal to send your data to Facebook.

GDPR requires the users consent to do so. Having a statement in a privacy policy is imho not enough to qualify as consent.

papln5• 6 years ago

I'm not anyone's lawyer. These are questions, not answers: GDPR is about collecting data from you, right? If Site X is sending data about you to Facebook, perhaps that's an issue with Site X's GDPR compliance, not Facebook's?

Santosh83• 6 years ago

I apparently have no records of off-Facebook activity. This is probably because of blocking all 3rd-party cookies and enabling the blocking of social media trackers in both uBlock as well as that built into Firefox.

Hoasi• 6 years ago

You must log in to continue.

Nah, I will pass.

croon• 6 years ago

I couldn't open the link either. I have only the URL to go on, but the irony is... glaring.

Jaruzel• 6 years ago

I don't use Facebook, but I do use Messenger as I have a couple of close family members who refuse to use anything else. I've just logged into Facebook (which has no history as I've purged it[1]), and still there are 5 apps sharing my activity with Facebook. These 5 apps are all on my phone, so I guess Messenger is also sharing back to FB. :( ---

[1] Shameless plug: https://github.com/Jaruzel/DeleteFacebookActivity

[Cross-posted from the other thread]

eivarv3• 6 years ago

I can't believe that this stuff is acceptible, or even legal. The fact that you're tracked off-Facebook (for instance), even if you're not logged in or on Facebook is not just creepy, but borderline abusive.

vinaypai8• 6 years ago

Congratulations, of all the people who have responded with outrage on this thread, you are the only person I've found that has a website listed that DOESN'T run Google Analytics or some other third party analytics platform.

eivarv3• 6 years ago

Thanks, but what value does your appeal to people's hypocracy bring to this discussion?

tallgiraffe• 6 years ago

In case of Facebook, one has to wonder, is this a move towards consumer privacy, or a way for Facebook to clear cache so they could build a more up to date profile of you.

milankragujevic3• 6 years ago

Apparently my website is complicit in this... I'm disgusted with and ashamed of myself.

https://i.imgur.com/Wz7O8HU.png

Edit: typo complacenet to complicit, thanks Zarel.

Zarel• 6 years ago

(I think you wanted to use "complicit")

Please update us as to how this happened!

milankragujevic3• 6 years ago

I think I have a pixel on there for some reason? I don't recall why I put it there.

It really does hurt when you see how awful your own behaviour is, i.e. by spying on users. I'm sorry everyone!

Jupe4• 6 years ago

You mean you didn't know this would happen by adding something (script, tracker, pixel, etc.) to your site, or you don't have a root cause as to why your own site is sending data to FB?

milankragujevic3• 6 years ago

I didn't assume that Facebook would explicitly connect this information with the visitors in this way. I don't remember WHY I added the pixel but I did add it. I need to get rid of these things, and Disqus.

I was probably trying to do some research on visitor demographics, which presumably failed.

Nextgrid14• 6 years ago

It would be good to name and shame every vendor that shares data with Facebook and have them in a searchable list, so people can check before engaging with them.

joshspankit3• 6 years ago

Anyone else thrown off that “Download Activity Details” (which seems to be the only way you can find out what interaction was sent) leads to the main Download Your Information page, and not to anything specific to that app or that interaction?

thegeekbin• 6 years ago

Clearly I need to step it up. I was (unsurprisingly) surprised at what I've observed they've managed to correlate. I run standard pi-hole, resist fingerprinting, and normally go through a VPN (mainly because I'm on public wifi half the time when travelling). I haven't logged into facebook in about four years, just did it for the first time today to see what's been correlated.

Aside the mountain of irrelevant notifications, here's what I've observed in this report that's concerning.

1. Albeit some data has been correlated properly (banking applications which is scary on it's own part it's sending data to facebook, imgur, Xbox, my telco provider, and a few misc blogs I've visited a handful of times per year), it's correlated a significant amount of data that may not belong to me (good thing, I suppose?)

2. Why the heck are banking applications sending data to Facebook as "CUSTOM", with no context? For example, RBC bank in Canada sends "CUSTOM" data (haven't been with them for over two years, but all interacts labelled CUSTOM) and Facebook will not give any more context on the exact data it received. Little scummy, Facebook.

Well, time to sweep this up and resist tracking more. Let's see how it works this time round.

monkeynotes• 6 years ago

When you say `interact[s]` you mean interactions right? Not interact transfers?

xfalcox• 6 years ago

You will want to use Firefox containers in order to isolate the Facebook cookie into a container to limit this.

ocdtrekkie• 6 years ago

I use Facebook container and most of the sites reporting should've never even seen my Facebook account. However, many of these sites have my email address. I highly suspect they're correlating data without knowing my Facebook account itself.

untog2• 6 years ago

Unfortunately there are no good answers for this on mobile.

gpvos3• 6 years ago

Hmm, I don't use pi-hole, just uBlock Origin and Firefox containers, and they've only tracked three minor things, probably when I had some problems with my phone and uBlock wasn't working right.

So how were they able to track so much about you? Do you have the Facebook or Whatsapp app on your phone? Or is this just the difference that they track much more in the US than in Europe?

TACIXAT2• 6 years ago

My activity was largely from apps on my phone. I just uninstalled and reviewed every one of those that was unnecessary. Unfortunately I need to find a new financial aggregator, because mine was sharing data with FB. I've seen a few self hosted ones listed on hn.

novok2• 6 years ago

I think you can't avoid links you click within facebook itself right?

y-c-o-m-b• 6 years ago

They only had two small websites for me. Great success!

I'll share my strategy.

On desktop:

Banking: Vivaldi Browser w/ privacy badger and ublock origin

Email and Commerce: Chrome Browser w/ privacy badger and ublock origin

News and other BS (like Hacker News): Firefox browser, always in private mode w/ privacy badger and ublock origin

LinkedIn (in the rare case I use it): Internet Explorer

Mobile:

Facebook: Opera

Commerce: Chrome

Reddit: Naked Browser

News and other BS: DuckDuckGo Browser

EDIT: I also do not use my credit card on my phone unless in extreme rare events. Absolutely no banking on my phone. No fancy apps (I use the web version where possible) beyond the generic stuff like email and maps. I use Signal for texting.

deadbunny• 6 years ago

I also had only 2 sites/apps. One I used Facebook oauth, the other I'm not 100% sure what it was.

My strategy (Desktop & Mobile):

Firefox + Facebook Container & uBlock Origin & Privacy Badger & DDG as search.

throwawaylolx7• 6 years ago

Is there an equivalent Off-Facebook for Google?

dutchCourage• 6 years ago

There is, and it's equally creepy: https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity

throwawaylolx7• 6 years ago

This is only information related to Google services or approved third-party apps, no? I was hoping there was a service showing what apps communicated with my Goolge account without any explicit notification or permission.

avip• 6 years ago

I was asked to "sign in" to "facebook" therefore I have no idea what this post is about.

(seriously, concerned citizens should consider browsing fb incognito and never stay signed-in)

AlexandrB2• 6 years ago

I agree with this advice. I treat facebook.com like a warez site from the 90s: actively hostile. So far only off-site activity tracking came from AirBnB.

Doctor_Fegg2• 6 years ago

Four days before the UK general election, Facebook apparently "received activity" relating to me from an anonymous, icon-less organisation with a cryptic name, who appear to be completely un-googleable.

Well, that's reassuring.

gatherhunterer• 6 years ago

Nice FUD there.

icon-less organisation with a cryptic name

Oh my god what if they're foreign? Isn't it terrifying to think about foreigners? Better take that fear into the voting booth with you.

Doctor_Fegg2• 6 years ago

Er, what? Where did I mention anything about them being foreign?

apetresc• 6 years ago

I honestly can't tell what you're trying to insinuate. What exactly is this nefarious activity log doing that relates to the general election?

chinathrow• 6 years ago

That's so funny that they come up with this page these days.

"We receive Jane's off-Facebook activity and we save it with her Facebook account. The activity is saved as "visited the Clothes and Shoes website" and "made a purchase"."

I downloaded my data before, and never have I seen what exactly the listed companies sent to FB.

I have a list of just a few companies (mainly by using a different email address for FB only) but still, I have no idea what these companies sent to FB about me.

Edit: I found the data now - it's now available for export.

stonedge2• 6 years ago

Allegedly, I ditched my Facebook account years ago. Not just deactivated but delete, though I don’t really believe it. Is there anyway to see what’s in this (or to see if my account really is gone) without accidentally re-upping?

hughes• 6 years ago

I had deactivated my account about a year ago. I tried logging in to view this page, and it reactivated everything immediately. Also, it has clearly been linking a vast quantity of off-facebook activity despite my account being deactivated.

hellofunk• 6 years ago

Facebook provides two different options, one is deactivation and the other one is deleting. They are not the same thing. If you merely deactivated it, then your account never was deleted.

metachris• 6 years ago

Depending on your location, but you could do a GDPR Data Subject Request (DSR)

Nextgrid14• 6 years ago

Facebook doesn't really comply with the GDPR. The data displayed on this new page wasn't part of their data export and I'm sure is still not part of it.

Here's an example to what extents they will go in order to not give you what you're entitled to by law: https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/

In fact, if they were GDPR compliant, they wouldn't be collecting this data in the first place.

zrobotics• 6 years ago

I had followed a guide in ~2010 to delete my account (since the magic incantations to delete your account at that point were really obscure). I was told via email that my account would be deleted a certain amount of time (90 days IIRC); I got curious in 2015 and logged back in. I was not terribly surprised to find that I could log back into the account and all my old data was still there. They may actually delete accounts now, but this certainly hasn't always been true.

stonedge2• 6 years ago

I took the leap and tried to log in. It said there was no account, so I guess the delete worked?

code4tee• 6 years ago

Clearly they’ve come to the realization that they either do this voluntarily or future regulation will force them to do it. The beginning of the end of hyper-targeted online advertising has started.

qu4ku• 6 years ago

Nowhere to hide.

Just a few days ago I wanted to research some nasty disease and I used brave on TOR to watch some stuff about it on YT.

First thing after I opened FB was a clinical laboratory tests adv.

ivyirwin• 6 years ago

My first reaction to this was to be creeped out. Even being in the industry how did all of these sites (560) have data about me that they were willingly sending to Facebook without my permission. And while I have a Facebook account, I am not a Facebook user – as in I've logged in twice in the last year to see a neighborhood post or the like.

But then I went from creeped out to oh shit as sites I run were on the list. The way Facebook puts it, these businesses are actively sharing data with Facebook for the businesses benefit. But as a developer who has been asked to put a pixel on a site many times, I have to rethink the data exchange here. Obviously the sites are not getting the benefit that Facebook is receiving from everyone piping in data – often unknowingly.

papln5• 6 years ago

Obviously the sites are not getting the benefit

How is that obvious?

Surely sites would eventually stop going through the extra effort to maintain trackers if they didn't get a benefit?

king_magic• 6 years ago

Real nice that there is no bulk turn-off feature. Giant pain to click through a few hundred sites to block future activity. But I suppose that's the point, right? To make it as difficult as possible for users to block this kind of oh-shit creepy behavior.

loxs2• 6 years ago

There is not turn-off at all. If you read carefully you will see that they will still collect the data, just that they "promise" won't assign it to you. Yeah right :)

heinrichhartman• 6 years ago

What is this? I only get a login prompt. I don't have a fb account.

Would s/o mind explaining what this is all about.

nerdjon• 6 years ago

The fact that they have information about apps that I specifically chose to not link to facebook for variety of reasons...

Including one specific app that they have 356 interactions from that I really do not want associated with my facebook account.

Looks like I am going to be spending the next couple of days digging through the report I just generated.

When this is all server side is the only option to make an email that is only for facebook and hope they can't link data any other way?

Nextgrid14• 6 years ago

The fault is half on Facebook but also half on the providers & services sending the data to Facebook. The Facebook SDK or tracking pixel doesn't magically embed itself into apps or websites, it's still up to the developer to include this.

I suggest stopping doing business with that vendor and letting them know why.

vinaypai8• 6 years ago

I realize this is an unpopular opinion around here... but can anyone explain how they have actually been harmed by this? Like for real not in abstract notions of "creepiness" or whatever. I, for one with Facebook actually figured how to do something useful with that data and not be that raw sewage stream that basically led to stop logging in.

elicash4• 6 years ago

My particular issues are different from most people here.

The biggest impact, for me, is that the dominance of Google and Facebook based on having access to this data for the general population has led to worse advertising revenue for the news industry and some of my favorite websites. That has caused some of them to rely on memberships and paywalls.

I also don't appreciate that the money that they've accrued due to their dominance as a result of data like this has led to undue political influence. That comes at the expense, I believe, of voters (and I'm one of them). I don't think that power is healthy for a democracy, generally. I believe this about non-tech companies, too, so I wouldn't suggest anybody just pick on this industry.

This isn't to say that I'm not concerned about privacy. It's only to say that IF YOU AREN'T, then there are other reasons to root for people to have transparency around how their data gets passed around.

vinaypai8• 6 years ago

I for one much prefer paywalls. I'd rather be the customer than the product.

mcstafford2• 6 years ago

Yeah, and the other stalkers out there should find productive use of their data gathering, too.

gummydog• 6 years ago

The harm is that Facebook gains control over prediction markets that they then sell to the rich and powerful to nudge enough of the population to their points of view. These points of view are often not in the general public interest.

mrgreenfur2• 6 years ago

Agree here; Given the insane hours that people spend in FB, the feed becomes part of their reality and better nudges affect their outlook on the world, their spending decisions and their political directions.

HelloFellowDevs• 6 years ago

Kinda surprised how many interactions I've had tracked from my visits to Home Depot, I've only recently started stopping by there in the past year or so. What data could they have possibly even used? Sell me more cardboard moving boxes? Plant supplies?

Jupe4• 6 years ago

You'd be surprised... Both are multi-billion-dollar industries:

https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/cardboar...

https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/market-research-repo...

RandallBrown• 6 years ago

I imagine they use the information of what you bought in the store to target ads for things you might want.

If you went there to buy moving boxes, they might show you ads for paint or other things someone who just moved might want.

DannyB2• 6 years ago

I clicked the link and was told I needed to log into Facebook to continue.

Is it necessary to have a FB account in order to read TFA?

Lewton• 6 years ago

It's not an article, it's a link to an overview of all the "off-facebook activity" data that facebook has gathered on your (the logged in) profile

kirillzubovsky• 6 years ago

When is Facebook's next investor call? The number of newly active users (who showed up for this) is going through the roof!

Pxtl2• 6 years ago

... wow.

You know, you hear about tracking cookies but it's a whole other thing to see it staring you in the face. What's the most shocking is how small so many of these entries are. Like, there's a local children's day-camp and sports facility that I send my kids to on P.A. days on the list. And a local politician's page.

Pxtl2• 6 years ago

... html/js allowing requests to domains other than the one in my URL bar was a mistake.

sequoia• 6 years ago

Can someone tell us non-Facebook users what this looks like?

alpha_squared• 6 years ago

From what I can gather (I'm in the same boat), it seems Facebook launched a portal for users to see what third-party services/activities they know about. One user here mentions an offline, in-store Macy's transaction appearing in that data; others mention streaming service data (Netflix, Hulu); one even mentions a reference to Blind, but not much detail on what type of data.

Surely, Facebook must be collecting this on non-users as well who obviously have not agreed to their terms.

jmccorm• 6 years ago

NETFLIX. The regular "payment" records don't concern me but the "custom" records (as recent as last night) do. Is that viewing data or what is this? I've also got "custom" records from HULU, but the last one was in December.

This isn't necessarily sinister... but it certainly raises some questions on what these streaming video companies are telling Facebook on a regular basis.

makecheck• 6 years ago

Be sure to find both settings: the one to clear activity up to now, and the separate one to ensure that future activity is not tracked either.

Andromeda88• 6 years ago

Emirates NBD Bank app and CAREEM app are sharing info with Facebook.

It was very surprising to see ENBD in the list.

gjm11• 6 years ago

There's a little note saying that the list may not be complete. If you click that, they pop up an explanation, one of the bullet points in which says this:

We receive more details and activity than what appears here. For technical and accuracy reasons, this list doesn't show all of the activity that we've received. Activity that is not shown includes information that we've received when you're not logged in to Facebook, or when we can't confirm that you've previously used Facebook on that device. It also includes details such as the item that you added to your shopping basket.

It seems to me that this gives them carte blanche to omit anything they feel like omitting.

cryptozeus2• 6 years ago

Now imagine what google has on you.

s-skl• 6 years ago

fuing unbelievable that my photo to scan app on the phone is sending activity to Facebook!

cryptozeus2• 6 years ago

Blind app send interactions to Facebook. This defies the whole point of blind app. This is so wrong on so many levels.

dtrailin• 6 years ago

This was the most shocking for me. How is Blind getting my FB info from the app? Is there a way to prevent this on Android?

Jupe4• 6 years ago

Interestingly, none of the other "big brother" companies show up on my activity feed, even though I do use them. No Apple. No Amazon. No Google. No Netflix. Not even Microsoft.

Anyone else??

Wow, this is beyond creepy.

fsflover• 6 years ago

"You have no available activity to show at this time."

Qubes OS with disposable VMs helps!

abright• 6 years ago

Ah, so disappointing that I need a Facebook account to read this. The joy of missing out.

CodiePetersen2• 6 years ago

I deleted my Facebook a couple months ago. Now I wish I would have kept it just a little longer to see what they had on me.

But in the end I still would have deleted it. Facebook clearly can't be trusted with my data. Idc what connections it gives me. They have shown time and time again that they will exploit the tiniest things to predict and manipulate your behavior.

And apparently companies desperate for even slight up ticks in conversion rates will upload everything they know about you.

No wonder Cambridge Analytica, AggregateIQ, and Robert Mercer had such an easy time compiling psychological profiles and categories of Americans and Brits.

In the end, it's real simple. The human brain adjusts based on the environment and events around it. Id rather not have Zuckerberg, Dorsey, or anyone else they deem worthy, intentionally or otherwise playing around in my head.

kcorey• 6 years ago

It's still there.

Try logging in. You might have to reset your password, but the bastard's haven't really deleted it.

netule• 6 years ago

I tried this, but it only gives me the option to sign up. I think I deleted my account around two years ago, and it's seemingly really gone.

marknadal• 6 years ago

I don't understand.

It says I completed a registration for a company I never signed up to.

I did visit that company's restaurant that day, but I did not purchase anything.

Are some companies auto-registering you?

novok2• 6 years ago

Now we need a one click delete all data in account button, without 'deleting' the account, because 'deleting' your facebook account doesn't delete any of the data inside of it.

rypskar2• 6 years ago

Also check https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/?entry_product=info... to see who has uploaded lists including your email or phone number to to facebook. Wonder what GDPR say about uploading this type of lists

neycoda2• 6 years ago

I removed my Facebook info from my browser and phone, changed the info I had on there to be basically anonymized (except to people who know me), and then logged in with a different browser on both desktop and phone dedicated to just Facebook. Now they can't tell what websites I'm going to and don't have direct access to my photos and files etc.

nonbirithm• 6 years ago

I was surprised to see that Plex is sharing a bunch of interactions with Facebook despite me only signing in with email. They seem to just blindly correlate the email address with whatever Facebook account it points to. There is no mention of Facebook on their privacy page[1]. As a lifetime Plex Pass holder this has damaged my credibility with them.

One of their employees says this is in error[2] so hopefully it will be fixed.

I guess signing in with email is pretty much equivalent to contacting Facebook if this is possible to do.

Besides that there are physical retailers that send data to Facebook even though I don't recall giving them any idea identifying info. I feel powerless since I rely on Messenger for communication with friends, who I've tried and failed to convince to switch elsewhere.

[1] https://www.plex.tv/about/privacy-legal/privacy-preferences/

[2] https://forums.plex.tv/t/why-is-plex-sharing-my-activities-w...

decko• 6 years ago

I don't think it's be email (or at least not ONLY email). The page shows a company is sharing my data with Facebook and my email address is different from the one I use with that company.

prophesi2• 6 years ago

Yeah, I was really surprised to see Plex in my friend's off-FB-activity list. I've been wanting to switch to Emby, but I already have a Plex lifetime membership, and it would be difficult to get friends to make the switch. I'm not liking Plex's direction with getting into the streaming business, along with this FB spyware mishap.

thekyle• 6 years ago

it would be difficult to get friends to make the switch

Could you elaborate on why this is an issue? Plex doesn't really have network effects and is usually only managed by 1 person.

Maybe you give your friends access to your instance? In which case it seems like they are in no position to complain.

theqult• 6 years ago

390 connected apps. And i never use facebook login

ben77992• 6 years ago

I feel like this stuff actually creeps me out more since I deleted my Facebook account. I didn't deactivate, I completely deleted.

I'm near 100% sure they're still trying to track & sell me, but without an account I can't even see it.

mcstafford2• 6 years ago

Back when I got rid of my account there wasn't an option to immediately delete an account. It first had to be deactivated, and would supposedly be deleted after a two-week cool-down period.

ben77992• 6 years ago

Yes I went through that too. It was about 2 years ago.

They sent me all the warnings that they were deleting anything.

Do I believe them at all? Not really?

dbg31415• 6 years ago

Can someone post a screenshot for those of us with out Facebook accounts?

collinmanderson• 6 years ago

https://snipboard.io/H1KQ2r.jpg

allovernow• 6 years ago

So is there any way to find out what information FB has on you if you don't have an account?

Lammy• 6 years ago

The linked page displays nothing but "You must log in to continue" if you don't have a Facebook account. I searched around and found this news page that explains it: https://about.fb.com/news/2019/08/off-facebook-activity/

alasdair_6• 6 years ago

To me the thing that bothered me most was that a mental health site (Psychologytoday.com) that I used to find a therapist was passing the information on my searches to Facebook, presumably to aid in targeted advertising.

Honestly, I think that health-related searches that are directly tied to a specific individual (especially without informed consent - I didn’t log in or receive any notice this was being done) should be covered by HIPPA just like any other personally identifiable health record.

The other weird one was the huge amount of data my bank was sending. 20+ requests per session. I have no idea why they would do that.

sizzle• 6 years ago

This needs to be brought to the attention of legislators. Our digital health data needs to be protected like it is in a real world setting.

I wonder what Google is doing with all those health related searches I'm making...

alasdair_6• 6 years ago

I think a solution would be for people to own their own personally identifiable information, in much the same way that a celebrity can own their “likeness”.

Unauthorized copying or use of this information could be simple copyright infringement, which is apparently criminal enough to involve the FBI if you are a movie studio with enough money spend on political donations.

otterlicious• 6 years ago

Thanks to this comment I noticed mine has a hospital:

    bannerhealth.com (8)

The portal where I access my records is on a third-party vendor's domain and this is likely just from Like buttons on their public site. But I wouldn't be surprised to see the name of the specialist I saw (just to look up their phone number) or a condition they treated (the portal links to articles there) in those 8 entries. Haven't bothered to download my entire history just to see...yet.

DevKoala• 6 years ago

Is there a way to tell how Facebook is tracking you if you deleted your account?

yason2• 6 years ago

I had a few - all of them from my Android apps and via Facebook business tools i.e. the vendors are actively pushing my data to Facebook. One utility app that I'm not surprised about, one that I'm a bit more surprised about but the interesting bit was G-Shock Connect (for the watch).

I installed their app once, figured it doesn't properly do the only thing I needed it for (show battery charge level), and I went to uninstall it. How did it find itself on Facebook?

The app wasn't given any permissions and I did not enter any personal information. The TOS did require giving consent to sending app and watch usage data but I didn't tick allowing that for marketing purposes nor was personal information mentioned, just identification data from the phone itself, operating system etc.

The app must have obtained my phone number or email from the phone's personal data. Apparently that's possible even if I declined all explicit permissions. They might be able to find my Google email by using Android's AccountManager apis. Phone number might be possible but slightly tricky and I think I disconnected my phone number from Facebook way before installing their app.

Interesting stuff - looks like everything should run in an anonymous container by default on phones, too. I hope we'll get there soon. Still, a lot of this is based on trust rather than technical countermeasures. Will you trust the vendor or not?

ArtDev• 6 years ago

These apps are from my phone which does not have the facebook app installed. They must be harvesting stuff on me from the Instagram and/or Whatapp permissions.

UncleSlacky• 6 years ago

Weirdly, FB thinks I've had dealings with Home Depot, which I've never visited (virtually or IRL). Nothing else, but then I use Ublock Origin, Privacy Badger, disconnect.me etc. as well as FB Purity. I also don't have a smartphone.

forgottenpass• 6 years ago

We receive more details and activity than what appears here. For technical and accuracy reasons, this list doesn't show all the activity that we've received. Activity that is not shown includes information we've received when you're not logged into Facebook, or when we can't confirm that you've previously used Facebook on that device.

So, basically all the information they have on me? I don't log in to facebook all that often. By not helping them survive me, they'll coyly pretend like they have less surveillance data tied to my account in their database than they do. I doubt they're going to purge those surveillance records "technical and accuracy" reasons.

ryanmarsh• 6 years ago

My payroll and accounting systems are talking to Facebook about me. Why? I have no idea.

Nextgrid14• 6 years ago

Is it FreeAgent by any chance? I use it (but can't check as I don't have a Facebook account) and if it is that one then I will definitely be looking to switch away as this is unacceptable.

alinspired• 6 years ago

never installed facebook app on a phone, but multiple 3rd party apps on the phone report to facebook. For some reported apps i've never been logged in.

looks like facebook knows my phone's "hardware id" from somewhere

edit: good to know that uBlock blocked all web activity

skytbest• 6 years ago

Did they take this down? It just goes to my Facebook home page

Off-Facebook activity

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