One of the things that a lot of people have started to realize about platforms like Facebook is that they really don’t seem to care all that much about the kind of privacy that you would ideally want for the personal information that you would inevitably share on them. Facebook is a particularly troublesome platform due to the reason that it tends to collect data no matter what you might be trying to do in order to prevent them from doing so.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that even people who have deactivated their Facebook accounts might not be safe from data collection by the company. You might think that deactivating your account would make it so that Facebook would no longer be able to collect any data on you, but it turns out that you will still get your privacy violated as long as you have an account on Facebook that you might just end up reactivating at any point in the future.
Advertisers can continue to show ads to you through a variety of different means, and Facebook eagerly uses this as an opportunity to continue building your profile just in case you decide to reactivate your account at any point in the future. Basically, all of the data that you have on your deactivated account is going to stay on Facebook’s servers which is something that a lot of users don’t even know about thereby making it yet another addition to a long line of privacy violations that Facebook continues to commit.
The thing to note here is that Facebook treats deactivated accounts just like regular accounts with regards to data collection, and the only way in which you can stop this from occurring is by deleting your account outright. Something of that sort is definitely going to make a lot of people question whether or not they want to continue using the social media service in the future, although it is important for people to first be educated about this so that they can make the right decision based on all of the pertinent factors.
Facebook has a network of advertising partners that are more than willing to share data. One example of this that we can tell you about has to do with gaming. If you play a videogame on your smartphone, the developer of that game could very well send all of the data they collect on you to Facebook which the company would add to your profile so that they can use it to show you targeted advertisements when you return.
This is the sort of thing that could harm advertisers as well, because they might not know that the data they are sending to Facebook belongs to a deactivated account. What’s more is that they might not even know whether or not the data they are using in their ads belongs to deactivated accounts either, something that could reduce the efficacy of their ads because they would be optimized based on data that belongs to accounts for people that aren’t even using Facebook at that precise moment.
Suffice it to say that this is something that impacts both consumers as well as advertisers. The only company that seems to be coming out on top is Facebook, and that appears to be a trend whenever you look into anything that has to do with that company. Even though Facebook is trying to rebrand itself, its numerous privacy violations and the fact that they are continuing to occur despite Facebook’s assurances to the contrary are a sign that things are not going to get any better any time soon and deleting your Facebook account might be your only option if you want to obtain control over your data once again.
Robert Galbraith / Reuters
H/T: DD.
Read next: Facebook intensifies its course of action against COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, stressing vaccine guide for kids
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that even people who have deactivated their Facebook accounts might not be safe from data collection by the company. You might think that deactivating your account would make it so that Facebook would no longer be able to collect any data on you, but it turns out that you will still get your privacy violated as long as you have an account on Facebook that you might just end up reactivating at any point in the future.
Advertisers can continue to show ads to you through a variety of different means, and Facebook eagerly uses this as an opportunity to continue building your profile just in case you decide to reactivate your account at any point in the future. Basically, all of the data that you have on your deactivated account is going to stay on Facebook’s servers which is something that a lot of users don’t even know about thereby making it yet another addition to a long line of privacy violations that Facebook continues to commit.
The thing to note here is that Facebook treats deactivated accounts just like regular accounts with regards to data collection, and the only way in which you can stop this from occurring is by deleting your account outright. Something of that sort is definitely going to make a lot of people question whether or not they want to continue using the social media service in the future, although it is important for people to first be educated about this so that they can make the right decision based on all of the pertinent factors.
Facebook has a network of advertising partners that are more than willing to share data. One example of this that we can tell you about has to do with gaming. If you play a videogame on your smartphone, the developer of that game could very well send all of the data they collect on you to Facebook which the company would add to your profile so that they can use it to show you targeted advertisements when you return.
This is the sort of thing that could harm advertisers as well, because they might not know that the data they are sending to Facebook belongs to a deactivated account. What’s more is that they might not even know whether or not the data they are using in their ads belongs to deactivated accounts either, something that could reduce the efficacy of their ads because they would be optimized based on data that belongs to accounts for people that aren’t even using Facebook at that precise moment.
Suffice it to say that this is something that impacts both consumers as well as advertisers. The only company that seems to be coming out on top is Facebook, and that appears to be a trend whenever you look into anything that has to do with that company. Even though Facebook is trying to rebrand itself, its numerous privacy violations and the fact that they are continuing to occur despite Facebook’s assurances to the contrary are a sign that things are not going to get any better any time soon and deleting your Facebook account might be your only option if you want to obtain control over your data once again.
Robert Galbraith / ReutersH/T: DD.
Read next: Facebook intensifies its course of action against COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, stressing vaccine guide for kids