How Facebook Exploits Your Private Information
You have willingly told Facebook who your friends are, what your hobbies are, how old you are, where you live and whether you are in a relationship or not. What's more, Facebook knows what you like and dislike, what your interests are, what your favourite movies and songs are - simply from the updates you share and the 'like' buttons you press. The big question is: are you happy for Facebook to exploit what they know about you?
The entire Facebook business model is based on the effective use of your data. Here is the deal: they give you a free social media platform to use and in turn sell advertising and insights based on what they learn about you. Today, Facebook has massive capabilities to collect, store and analyse data - what we call 'big data analytics'. This allows Facebook to sell very targeted advertising - e.g. 'someone living in the Mid-town district of Manhattan, who is single and who is interested in baseball and likes pizza'. This kind of knowledge is a marketeer's dream!
But Facebook goes beyond simply analysing and 'mining' the user profile data you have shared and the up-dates you have written. USA Today revealed how Facebook tracks you across the Web. Basically, when you create an account, Facebook inserts a 'tracking cookie' into your Web browser that allows Facebook to track each website you are visiting. This means when you are logged into Facebook and then browse the web (completely separately from your Facebook activities) Facebook knows what sites you are visiting.
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