With the latest privacy or information breach from Facebook, like many, you may be thinking about can cancelling your account or perhaps locking things down a bit more. Did you know though that you can request a download of all of your personal information – these are the data that others have apparently managed to access.
Of interest from facebook…
These are the categories of Facebook data that are available to you either in your activity log or your downloaded data, or in both places. We have provided a short explanation of what each data category is and where you can find it. We store different categories of data for different time periods, so you may not find all of your data since you joined Facebook. You will not find information or content that you have deleted because this is deleted from Facebook servers.
By visiting your Settings page (top right, click arrow, see “Settings”, the bottom option), click the option to “download a copy of my data” at the bottom of the general account section.
See Accessing Your Facebook Data
You may be wondering, what data is available?? See a sampling below
| What info is available? | What is it? | Where can I find it? |
|---|---|---|
| About Me | Information you added to the About section of your Timeline like relationships, work, education, where you live and more. It includes any updates or changes you made in the past and what is currently in the About section of your Timeline. | Activity Log Downloaded Info |
| Account Status History | The dates when your account was reactivated, deactivated, disabled or deleted. | Downloaded Info |
| Active Sessions | All stored active sessions, including date, time, device, IP address, machine cookie and browser information. | Downloaded Info |
| Ads Clicked | Dates, times and titles of ads clicked (limited retention period). | Downloaded Info |
| Address | Your current address or any past addresses you had on your account. | Downloaded Info |
| Ad Topics | A list of topics that you may be targeted against based on your stated likes, interests and other data you put in your Timeline. | Downloaded Info |
| Alternate Name | Any alternate names you have on your account (ex: a maiden name or a nickname). | Downloaded Info |
| Apps | All of the apps you have added. | Downloaded Info |
| Birthday Visibility | How your birthday appears on your Timeline. | Downloaded Info |
| Chat | A history of the conversations you’ve had on Facebook Chat (a complete history is available directly from your messages inbox). | Downloaded Info |
| Check-ins | The places you’ve checked into. | Activity Log Downloaded Info |
See also
Data Privacy and 8 simple tips to protecting your personal privacy online
