How to protect yourself and YOUR information from Facebook and other data-eating PREDATORS
Image: Yes, you can protect yourself from these cyber predators, as you can see below. Credits to Wonderlane (license: CC BY 2.0 license).
THE WONDERFUL WIZARDS OF MARKETING
How-to guide to PROTECT YOURSELF NOW, against privacy cyber predators.
That includes Cambridge Analytica, Facebook and others.
PART 3
THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE HOME
“Shocking report: The Facebook truth” is a three part series revealing the shocking facts about Facebook and the Cambridge Analytica Scandal, and how you can protect yourself against them and other corporate privacy cyber predators.
That my dear, is a “horse of a different color”
Now, what you can do to effectively mitigate the espionage on you, and how to get out of the marketers/psychologists cross-hairs?
The answer ultimately depends on how much you are emotionally/commercially attached/invested in Facebook. Therefore, there are two different approaches:
NOTE 1: In either case, Facebook and its friends, will maintain your digital persona alive until it can no longer use it. So, what can you do to avoid them and other marketers to snoop on you?
There’s an interesting book on this topic. But in a nutshell, this is what you have to do to protect your privacy:
1st APPROACH: For those fed up with Facebook and the way they have handled their snooping.
A slight detour prior applying 1st Approach
As you read above, Facebook still has your web history. And it can use it, use it, and abuse it…. Unless you do something mighty clever. Mind you this a an excerpt from Motherboard’s Kaleigh Rogers’ article: “Don’t just delete Facebook, poison your data first”. The idea here is to replace “all [your] data with nonsense”. That is, replace all your existing Facebook posts with garbage. However, as the author Kaleigh Rogers clearly states you may do so, but at your own risk because it may imply violating Facebook’s terms of service. To perform such mischievous deed, she presents a solution that replaces existing Facebook posts with randomly generated junk. The genius behind this anti-Facebook scheme, which was initially blocked by Facebook, is Kevin Matthew, a small entrepreneur, very savvy in computer coding.
The purpose here is to annihilate your Facebook history data, and as the coding whiz states: “If I want my data to be purged, I should have the right to do that”.
1st APPROACH
If you don’t have strings attached and you can survive without Facebook, then go ahead and delete your account. This is how you go about it:
- Log in to your Facebook account
- Click the little downward arrow to the top right side of the page (a drop down menu will appear)
- Click on “Settings” (which is way down before “Log Out”)
- Click on the “General” tab to the top left corner. This action will generate another drop down menu
- Click on “Manage your Account”, which is to the bottom of the menu
- Click “Edit”
- Click “Deactivate your account”
- Indicate the reason why you’re leaving Facebook for good
- Click the blue “Deactivate button”
- Since your information is valuable for Facebook, they will try to retain you by moving your emotions and showing pictures of your buddies. If any pop up button shows to make you reconsider, just click the “Deactivate Now” button.
But if you think you finally detached yourself from the obnoxious Facebook snooping, by deleting your account, by adding that smart piece of code to make their service go crazy, well, I have some news. You actually haven’t ditched Facebook yet, and yes, they can spy on you even if you don’t have a Facebook account. Read on, buddy.
Marck Zuckerberg told Congress that Facebook collects data from non-Facebook users too. So, even if you just deleted your Facebook account using the process shown here, Facebook is still following your footsteps. And most analysts say that there’s nothing you can do about it. But we here, have some secret weapons for you to obliterate or almost obliterate Facebook snooping.
The first secret weapon: If you have downloaded Onavo Protect, delete it now. Facebook bought it and is sending information from its 24 million users directly to Zuckerberg. Solution: get rid of Onavo protect NOW.
The second secret weapon: Facebook uses cookies, the famous “like” button and other plug-ins to track everybody (users and non-users). Solution: use a recognized browser add-on to stop third party trackers from sneaking behind your back to observe your on-line behavior. But you have to go higher that mere Adblockers, We recommend the open source Privacy Badger from EFF (free), and the AdGuard Browser extension (also free) to stop the spying on you.
Now, if you deleted your Facebook account and also applied this couple of secret weapons, that should prevent Facebook from snooping on you on-line.
2nd APPROACH: For those who can live without remorse toward Facebook or are too attached to it
If you need Facebook soooo bad, that you can’t breath or live without it, then you may use the following approach:
A. Download your digital file
- Log in to your Facebook account
- Go to the tab called “Settings”
- Click “Download a copy of your Facebook data”
- Click “Download Archive”
- When prompted, click “Download Archive” again
- Have fun checking your Facebook history by reviewing each file (they are all neatly organized under various categories, such as ads, apps, friends, messages, photos, videos, etc.)
B. Decrease your Facebook exposure without leaving it altogether
- Log in to your Facebook account
- Go to the tab called “Settings”
- And start moving the toggles there to fit your new digital persona. Explicitly sellecting or deselecting the information that you don’t want to share. Everything prior to the day that you do this, is already known by the world, and you, perhaps unknowingly, let it happen.
There you have it. Two approaches and a series of hacks, secret weapons and a truckload of information to get you protected on-line. Now, go and conquer the world.
About Article Author
