Real nice that there is no bulk turn-off feature. Giant pain to click through a few hundred sites to block future activity. But I suppose that's the point, right? To make it as difficult as possible for users to block this kind of oh-shit creepy behavior.
Off-Facebook activity
181–190 of 395 posts
Re: Off-Facebook activity
#182Clearly I need to step it up. I was (unsurprisingly) surprised at what I've observed they've managed to correlate. I run standard pi-hole, resist fingerprinting, and normally go through a VPN (mainly because I'm on public wifi half the time when travelling). I haven't logged into facebook in about four years, just did it for the first time today to see what's been correlated. Aside the mountain of irrelevant notifica…
Hmm, I don't use pi-hole, just uBlock Origin and Firefox containers, and they've only tracked three minor things, probably when I had some problems with my phone and uBlock wasn't working right.
So how were they able to track so much about you? Do you have the Facebook or Whatsapp app on your phone? Or is this just the difference that they track much more in the US than in Europe?
Re: Off-Facebook activity
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not a situation where FB “managed to obtain”. It’s Macy’s directly uploading transactions in order to attribute purchases to their online ad campaigns. It uses email and name etc to match.
I agree. While its easy to point at Facebook and say "they are so creepy" - this sounds like the type of challenge every marketing department faces. "What is the attribution of X,Y,Z ad campaigns?" Connecting purchase + email + 'where the ad happened' via social solves that.
> While its easy to point at Facebook and say "they are so creepy" - this sounds like the type of challenge every marketing department faces. "What is the attribution of X,Y,Z ad campaigns?"
That can still be creepy. (If you're meaning that the accusation of "creepy" should be directed at modern marketing in general and not just Facebook, yes, I'd agree with that, though a good part of how we got here is large centralized aggregators like Facebook.)
I think there are plenty of non-advertising contexts where "using people's data to influence their behavior more effectively" can easily cross from normal to creepy as you start collecting more data. If you give your SO a certain flower because you remember a conversation the two of you had a while ago about that flower, that's normal and even thoughtful. If you give your SO a certain flower because you hired people to follow them before you even started dating and you got a report that they always stopped to admire a certain flower on their walk to work, that's creepy.
Re: Off-Facebook activity
#184What is this? I only get a login prompt. I don't have a fb account.
Would s/o mind explaining what this is all about.
Re: Off-Facebook activity
#185Is there an equivalent Off-Facebook for Google?
There is, and it's equally creepy: https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity
This is only information related to Google services or approved third-party apps, no? I was hoping there was a service showing what apps communicated with my Goolge account without any explicit notification or permission.
Re: Off-Facebook activity
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you are carrying your cell phone at the time—not sure anyone is doing this yet, but I have heard of at least one chain that tracks customers' cell phone locations via triangulation.
Which chain?
As of 2013, at least Macy's. https://lifehacker.com/how-retail-stores-track-you-using-you...
Re: Off-Facebook activity
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
are credit cards different from debit cards in this regard? Do some credit cards not sell your transactions?
It's the card network (MasterCard, Visa, AE) that sells your data. They each have their own op out: * https://marketingreportoptout.visa.com/OPTOUT/request.do * https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/about-mastercard/what-we-do/... .
Anyone who wants to do this: Make sure that you also opt out your virtual card numbers (such as Apple Pay or Android Pay).
Also, the opt-out of each number is only honored for FIVE years after which you need to opt-out again.
Re: Off-Facebook activity
#188The fact that they have information about apps that I specifically chose to not link to facebook for variety of reasons...
Including one specific app that they have 356 interactions from that I really do not want associated with my facebook account.
Looks like I am going to be spending the next couple of days digging through the report I just generated.
When this is all server side is the only option to make an email that is only for facebook and hope they can't link data any other way?
Re: Off-Facebook activity
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't think they will tell you the whole truth. This is true: >We receive more details and activity than what appears in your off-Facebook activity. For technical and accuracy reasons, we don’t show all the activity we’ve received. This includes things like information we’ve received when you’re not logged into Facebook, or when we can’t confirm that you’ve previously used Facebook on that device. We also don’t s…
Thanks for that link. Looks like the infamous "ghost profiles" are officially confirmed now. I wish they would show the ghost profiles as well, but since it's not linked with 100% confidence they are probably not allowing it because it could be a privacy violation if it turns out that the link was incorrect (i.e. they showed a ghost profile to the wrong user).
I'm not sure how ghost profiles are legal within the EU.
Re: Off-Facebook activity
#190In my profile, they managed to obtain a `PURCHASE` event from Macy's -- for an in-person purchase at a physical store . Macy's has my email address and certainly linked it to my credit card number, but this is nonetheless seriously creepy. I just tried to change my email address on Facebook and discovered that they canonicalize plus and dot variations in gmail.com addresses, and thus claim that the new email address…
It’s not a situation where FB “managed to obtain”. It’s Macy’s directly uploading transactions in order to attribute purchases to their online ad campaigns. It uses email and name etc to match.
Match backs? Or offline conversions? Looks like Zapier offers a match back service too.