Gadgetory

you're gonna be weirded out when you see what Facebook knows about you or more like what it thinks it knows about you but you can take some action right now to limit what is being shared to outside groups and control how this company labels you to advertisers I've been on Facebook since 2005 so it has a ton of data on me and I think I'm pretty good about privacy but that's still 13 years worth of friends and photos and comments and likes and pokes so let's dive into my settings here and see what they have on me you should do this too go into Facebook settings up in the top right click the arrow now click settings now go on over to the left to the ads section this whole area is where Facebook lists all the labels it puts on you for advertisers and there's a lot here let's start by going over to your information and click on over to your categories all right so facebook says i'm a new parent of a toddler okay birthday in June and they've labeled me politically and oh here I guess my multicultural affinity is african-american maybe because of who I interact with or who my friends are the other details here are so weird it tracks how much you travel it can't even get specific to how long ago you traveled I can tell you not everything here is correct and it's bizarre to read this okay let's scroll back up to the heart under your interest there's even more surprises in here you can poke around here under sports I have no idea why it thinks I'm into the Toronto Maple keep clicking around let's see there's a category for people okay I don't know why it thinks I like David Schwimmer I mean who likes Ross and I wasn't even that into France and why what is Tom from MySpace here okay here come more little X's no no and no this is layers of crazy but it matters because Facebook's algorithms use these labels to decide what you see in your feed it's a sad truth but we're living in a time where our information could be misused to manipulate us and these labels can shape your worldview and what information is served up for you here's another area that can cause trouble the apps that connect with your Facebook profile you're gonna find this list in settings under apps okay this is embarrassing I have a hundred and thirty apps I need to clean this up because I don't even need all these apps tapping into my profile I don't even remember you see in some of these oh boy all right you can edit how much info each app can access or just click X to remove access completely remove and delete all activities thank you but it doesn't end there my friends apps can even share information about me just check out this setting below on the same page it's called apps others use click edit to open here you can see what info about you is being shared to the apps your friends use no I ain't having none of that so I made sure I uncheck everything in this list and if you want to go all the way on the privacy train ride you're gonna need to stop using Facebook to sign into websites go to this section above called apps websites and plugins and be sure to turn the platform off disabled well I don't know about you but this was eye-opening the bottom line is if you don't want to delete Facebook just be smarter with what you share this is your information protect yourself online because you can't trust a company to do it for you