Facebook, being a social media giant, is widely being used by everyone we know. Moreover, if this social media champ was a country, it would be bigger than the population of the United States, China, and Brazil – combined. Although that number was last year, it would still reflect the current standing of the website.
Since this is the case, we can also therefore have the assumption that a lot of people would try to break into other people’s information. Cybercrime and hacking had been a long discussion between different people. There are criminals who use their skills in the field of technology to steal other people’s information and gain financial benefit. So if this is the case, what would you do?
Read: How to Hide Location on your posts on Facebook
Of course, the basic instinct of a person who would be stolen from is to safeguard their information. Furthermore, unless this information is totally irrelevant, they wouldn’t mind. Hackers and cyber criminals would pinpoint and focus on information that would be beneficial for their plots.
But what if the people or institution plotting this is a social media giant? What if they store or keep your information for you?
You might be shocked and amazed at the same time. Nick Whigham, a profound Facebook user, just recently discovered that Facebook somehow stores your personal information with precise details. Moreover, Facebook kept things he did not expect to see further in his life.
Facebook has a secret file for each of their user/subscriber?
Yes! Facebook keeps and stores information for us. As per Nick, it contains a lot of detailed information and that he is surprised with the unearthing.
“It included scanned copies of lease forms from a previous rental property I must have sent to my buddies over Messenger. In addition to that, it also contained my current tenant ledger report, an old monthly billing statement for my home broadband, screenshots of banking transfers and seemingly endless web pages of all the banal conversations I have ever had on the platform,” he said.
“It’s an odd feeling to think that in some ways, Facebook knows you better than you know yourself,” Nick added.
Not just that, this “secret file” that Facebook stores for its subscribers contains facial recognition data, names, numbers, and contact details of your contacts, websites you’ve visited, and other more information.
Does it sound off to you? Or is it just fine?
Accessing it is not rocket science; with just one click of a button, you will be able to work on finding out which files were stored for yourself.
So how can you access this secret file?
Firstly, you need to log in to your Facebook account. I haven’t seen the feature on the smartphone application yet so you need to log in to your account using a PC.
While in your account, click on the Menu button which is the upside down triangle on the right-hand side of the Facebook main category bar. You will see Settings.
Hitting on settings would pop-up different options; hit on General. Once in, you will see General information about yourself. On the bottom part of it, you will see “Download a copy of your Facebook data.” Hit on that and it will redirect you to the page where you would be starting the download.
As you can see, it includes:
- Posts and photos shared by your account
- Messages and chat conversations
- Information from the About section of your profile
- Account status history
- Ads clicked
- Deleted Friends
To tell you honestly, there are tons of things you would be seeing when you download your information. This is why clicking on Start Archive reminds you that it might take a while before it successfully downloads.
After actually downloading it, wait for an hour and you will receive an email confirming that your information is ready for download. As per Facebook, this action is part of how they keep their services FREE.
“We work with third-party companies who help us provide and improve our services or who use advertising or related products. This is what makes it possible to operate our companies and provide free services to people around the world.”
This is what’s told in Facebook’s data policy. Now that you know what information you can have in the “secret file,” how do you feel about this? Need some form of a backup on Facebook you’ve recently erased? Or do you just want to reminisce? If you do, you definitely can! The secret file of Facebook is one way of emphasizing that technology can really do great things.
Read Also: Things You Should Never Share Or Post On Facebook for Safety Reasons
