I had a Facebook account for over 10 years but never used it, not even once. I don't access Facebook in any way. About a year ago my wife noticed some of my internet searches were showing up on my her Facebook advertising. They were innocuous things such as deodorant or tools but they were clearly items I had searched for. We use completely separate devices, and I have never signed in to Facebook on any of our current devices. In fact I sign into Facebook only once or twice in an entire decade, just to see if the account was was still active. I have signed into Google on her computer I believe once or twice but I have signed out. I don't know if it is coming from Facebook, Google, Amazon or maybe our ISP, but I have now deleted my Facebook account. I have also changed the Chrome browser settings and Google settings to limit advertising but I am not sure yet if this has fixed the problem. I guess I will have to test this by searching for things on different devices to see which one populates to her Facebook advertising. Does anyone know how this could happen and how I can solve it for sure? Bob
Welcome to the Panopticon. "They" know where you live, where your wife lives, who you associate with and a whole lot about you. "They" includes FB, Google, other social media, shopping, and all the back-end data brokers who monetise and exchange information about you. It's worse if you've done this stuff on a smartphone. It's not only or principally FB, they are all at it. Unless you've been very careful, you have a public persona which leaves an immense footprint, and sweeps up your contacts - and they finger you whether you agree or not. How to solve it? Now that is the tricky question, and in a way, you're in the right place. Sadly, the partial answer involves a LOT of learning, technical controls, time and effort. I don't know your level of familiarity with all the concepts here, including creating a new persona or several, compartmentalisation, strict operational security, use of anonomising networks (VPNs and Tor), virtual machines and sandboxing, browser settings and privacy controls - the list goes on and is not a perfect answer. In fact, it's a disgrace that we are in this position. To some extent, the technical answers you can achieve here are only ever going to be partial - you should also be contacting your representatives, who sadly have been assaulting privacy for many years now, and allowing corporations unprincipled access to this data. It's not just FB. You are the product.
@deBoetie summed it nicely. If you did not pay for it you are the product. And in this case, even if you did not really use it for anything they still made you pay. Thanks to all those interconnected "Like"-buttons and other FB (and not just FB...) **** that are springled all over the Internet. If people could just see *how* much tracking stuff there is behind the background, that has nothing to do with the actual page content (1x1 pixels, invisible pixels, XHR requests, fishy JavaScript files from who knows what external site, cookies, flash cookies, canvas fingerprinting, battery API fingerprinting and so on and so on ....) They started profiling you from day 1, from the very moment you created your account, slowly, site by site... As for solution, all the things @deBoetie mentioned and I would add one more thing. Use text browser like Links. No seriously, text browsers don't support most of the **** tracking technologies that modern browsers do. And if you really need the images then Links can do that too (if started with "-g" command-line switch). Works with Linux,Unix, Windows, even DOS... ( ) Code: http://links.twibright.com/download.php http://links.twibright.com/user_en.html#subch-running_in_graphics_mode
Mark is soooo sorry (like a rascal that has been stealing cookies) Code: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/business/facebook-zuckerberg-apologies/?utm_term=.077863fdbe57 So, so, so sorry .........................................not!
I bet he's not so sorry about how many zeros it takes to write out his profits from all the things he's so sorry about.
It's done there is no & will never be any privacy. Being born of this FB era age unless privacy measures have been diligently followed through & constantly updated from birth. There's not a chance in Hades one has electronic privacy of which we're speaking. The only thing left LOL is vengeance. And that cannot be meted fairly & rightly on this plane. So hold on to your pants & pull them up whenever you can. But the FB & their kind, & the 3letters will constantly be pantsing everyone. But you can choose to not volunteer to the greatest degree by never using social media or at least stop using social media. Another one I get is my medical providers call/email/mail with annual health & or medication reviews or surveys. It is NOT INNOCENT or mandatory. They are recursive predatory acts trying to get me to VOLUNTARILY give up medical information they are NOT legally able to possess under HIPAA Laws.