Meet Marie (pretend anyway). She is a friend of my great aunt Rae Rae from back when she lived on Long Island, which ended about 15 years ago. My family, aunt, and her all went on a cruise seven years ago. She and I have emailed about six times since. She is in her 70’s, and still lives in NY.
It was rather surprising to see her profile in my suggested Facebook friends column a few months ago. How would Facebook know that we ever knew each other? I would have never thought she had a profile on Facebook, and have certainly never tried to search for her or use her name in anything I had ever posted. I got to thinking, and realized that the only way Facebook would know we knew each other is if she had used the email tool they provide that uses your email contact list to search for matching email addresses among its users.
I have never used this tool, but apparently she had, and my email address was still in her contacts. Although she never tried to contact me, and probably didn’t even view my profile, Facebook still linked our accounts together. Facebook knows that we at one point knew each other, even though we are not officially Facebook friends. This information is hidden on the Facebook servers, and is unable to be modified or deleted.
This made me angry, and prompted me to try something. I created a new email address and deleted my original email from Facebook and replaced it with this brand new one that I have never emailed anybody with, or received any emails from. About three weeks ago, Marie showed up in my profile again, even though it had been over a month since I removed my original email address.
This was a little startling when I realized how many people I have emailed, and how I really did not ever want to know, or be connected with, most of these people in any way. I had no control over Marie using the email finder tool, but that led our profiles to be connected without either of us knowing about it.
This led to another thought; in 2018, I will be 30 and either a completely different person, or dead (more likely judging by the way I eat), but Facebook will still know that I emailed Marie at least once 10 years earlier. They will also still know that I liked Qdoba, Casino Royale, went to 15 events with 30 of my friends, but didn’t go to these events with those people, friended, defriended, friended again, and finally blocked The Suckubus Critch (crazy bitch) in 2007, what I looked like and how I aged using any of the 300+ photos of me, and would have a pretty good idea of how I interacted with people online. This builds a better profile of myself than what I could even tell you. This is something that I’m not sure I really want a company run by a college drop-out 26 year old knowing.
There is also something that a lot of people don’t understand. Cookies, my favorite are Chips Ahoy, are used by almost every website that you visit. Sites, such as Facebook and many others, can access these cookies on your computer and know where you have been browsing. This is probably why you have seen surprisingly personal Facebook ads. This actually isn’t all bad because it helps target super relevant ads to you based on your browsing history, and relevant ads are good ads. Advertising is one of the most important things you will ever be exposed to, although you probably don’t believe that yet.
This brings me to the point of this post. Happy Quit Facebook Day by the way! No, I’m not going to stop using Facebook just yet; I can get away with saying some pretty unique things that I can’t really say anywhere else, and I definitely enjoy that. I have, however, stopped pouring all of my personal information into a service that does not delete anything, even after you have removed it from your profile.
Facebook won’t be cool forever (let’s face it, Facebook is about to, [or is in the process of] peaking). Facebook is sooo 2006-2010, just like MySpace was soo 2003-2006. 2010 won’t last forever, but your life on the Facebook servers will.
You should just take a second to think about what you have shared, and what Facebook knows about you that you may or may not even know yourself.
