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This article was published on December 13, 2011

How much does Facebook know about your life? This video might scare you


How much does Facebook know about your life? This video might scare you

We don’t give a lot of thought, these days, to liking a status update, adding a friend or sending a message. But if you’ve ever thought that you had a good idea of how much Facebook really knows about you, then this video is likely to blow your mind.

The story behind it, according to threatpost, is that Max Schrems of Vienna, Austria sent a formal request to get his data from Facebook. Since Schrems lives in Europe, it’s a Government-ensured right to be able to export your data from the social network. What he received, after a wait, was a disc containing 1,222 PDF files, detailing his every move.

In short, every move that Schrems ever made on the site had been recorded, including the messages that he thought would be long gone after he deleted them. Employment, relationships, geotagged photos…it’s all there, inside those 1,222 files, the length of which would rival the English translation of War and Peace, which clocks in at roughly 1,400 pages itself.

At any rate, the video is an eye opener, and should make us all a bit more aware of what we’re sharing out there. After all, as Sean Parker said about Facebook, “there’s good creepy and then there’s bad creepy.” And just remember, almost everything that you’ve done will be handed over to the police if Facebook gets a subpoena.

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