Facebook Holding Back Personal Data 125
itwbennett writes "Facebook has reduced the amount of personal data it releases to users as required by European Union law. Due to the volume of requests since Europe v. Facebook began its campaign, Facebook is no longer sending CDs to people. Facebook said in a statement that the CD mailout 'contains a level of detail that is less useful for the average user — it is a much rawer collection of data.' Instead, users are now directed to a page where they can download their personal 'archive,' which according to Facebook is a copy of 'all of the personal information you've shared on Facebook.' But rather than the 57 categories of data early data requesters received, the new tool downloads just 22 categories."
Re:This is information you gave them. (Score:3, Informative)
You are ignoring the fact that others can tag and post about you. You do not control the actions of all of your Facebook friends.
Re:This is information you gave them. (Score:5, Informative)
It seems probable that most users underestimate what information Facebook is collecting about them.
http://lifehacker.com/5843969/facebook-is-tracking-your-every-move-on-the-web-heres-how-to-stop-it [lifehacker.com]
Re:Facebook sends CD's? (Score:5, Informative)
It comes from European privacy laws which the US doesn't have, allowing people to demand to see what information is being stored about them.
Re:related question: (Score:4, Informative)
Or, go to your account options, go to the Discussions "tab" and for "Retrieve [ ] Messages" option select "Many" then it will retrieve all of them providing you are logged in.
Re:But I must give free reign to my inner narcissi (Score:5, Informative)
Irrelevant.
Here in the EU, you're the owner of your data. You have the right to request from any company that has personally identifiable data on you for any reason, to request it to be corrected, or to request it to be deleted.
There are also limits on how the information can be used.
Compliance with this isn't optional. There are big sanctions for not complying with the requirements, which go as high half a million Euro for the "very grave" category in some countries. And since at least where I am, the agency is self-financed, they're quite keen on collecting those.
Don't like it? Don't do business in the EU.
Re:This is information you gave them. (Score:4, Informative)
They deduce it. Similar names, similar locations, similar employment workplaces and similar school history. This provides possible links to several people in their database, and when several of those people have a network of interrelations, they can just ask if you know the most probable ones. As soon as she answers 'yes' or 'no' then facebook know stuff about her that is not deduction, but they can deduce more..
Re:Um, hang on. (Score:3, Informative)
"All at the expense of some tracking information that can't really tell you anything about your own browsing habits than you already know, it's not like they're compelled to give their analysis of that data, simply what pages you refreshed when. If they correlate that to find you tend to search for ponography featuring chubby women after visiting your cousin's profile, that's their information, not yours."
Sorry, but you're completely wrong on that as far as the EU is concerned. The legal definition of personal information is quite clear. "Information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person".
That's one of the key aspects of EU Data Protection law. It is precisely the act of "correlation" that the law is intended to control.