Facebook recently came under fire when the company allowed a third party app to misuse data from 50 million users on the site. Since then, people have been trying to figure out how much of their personal data has been used to target advertisements, gain email addresses and use location data to help the revenue of third party apps.
Facebook has always had an option for you to download the data it saves on you, but the last few weeks it has become a must for users.
Here's how you find your data:
1. On your desktop computer, click the down arrow in the top right part of the screen next to the question mark.
2. Click "Settings."
3. Click "General" if it doesn't default to the page.
4. Click "Download a copy of my Facebook data"
5. Enter your password and it'll start scraping data.
6. You'll get a notification via email when the data is done with a link to download the archive.
It takes a bit for all the data to come together, but you'll be notified when it's ready. The zip file contains all you've posted when it comes to photos, videos, messages, contact info, etc.
The more interesting tidbits in the HTML folder is it will show you all the ad topics you've interacted with, ads you've clicked on and what advertisers have your contact information.
Here are some of the main things you'll find:
- Advertisers that have your information
- Apps that have your information
- All your contacts information and phone numbers of Facebook friends
- Events you've interacted with
- Friends you've added, removed, declined, received and the date of each
- Facebook messages
- All photos you've posted or have been tagged in
- Places you've created
- Your entire timeline from creation
- Videos you've posted or been tagged in
Just as a point of reference, I joined Facebook in February 2006 and had about 804 MB worth of data I was given.