24-Year-Old Asks Facebook For His Data, Gets 1,200 PDFs

chicksdaddy writes "Be careful of what you ask for. That's a lesson Max Schrems of Vienna, Austria learned the hard way when he sent a formal request to Facebook for a copy of every piece of personal information that the social network had collected on him, as required under European law. After a wait, the 24-year-old law student got what he was seeking: a CD with all his data stored on it — 1,222 files in all. The collection of PDFs was roughly the length of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, but told a more mundane story: a record of Schrems' years-long relationship with the world's largest social network, including reams of data he had deleted. Now Schrems is pushing Facebook to disclose even more of what it knows."

Re:It should be illegal.....

[Anonymous Coward]

You might be legally retarded.

Re:It should be illegal.....

[CannonballHead]

"Making up arbitrary emotionally motivated "this should be illegal" arguments on the fly."
That should be illegal.

Re:It should be illegal.....

[bill_mcgonigle]

and no matter what arbitrary laws or draconian regulations you force companies to abide by,

We're going to mandate that they both delete data instantly to protect privacy and that they implement mandatory data retention periods so that data can be subpoenaed in the event of a crime.

Re:It should be illegal.....

[ksd1337]

You forgot to escape the internal quotes! Now THAT should be illegal!

Re:It should be illegal.....

[DrDitto]

Dude, go smoke some pot or something. You are way too angry for your own good.

Re:It should be illegal.....

[dward90]

Self reply, your you're there their they're etc.

Re:It should be illegal.....

[Intropy]

Meta-auto-moderation, that's a paddlin'.

Re:It should be illegal.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you're screwed. Stop letting random people access your account.