Facebook Permaculture - Because our online footprint is stored perm...

Facebook only has your best interest in mind.
Read that out loud, with tongue in cheek please, and then remember those times when the doctor or your parents said ‘it’s just a little prick’.

Of course Facebook only has our interests in mind, silly! Not only that, they like to keep them, because what we all would rather forget is that our every move is recorded and filed in unlimited storage facilities. Although Facebook isn’t the only culprit, companies that make use of these data storage facilities include Apple, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Skype, AOL among others.

Facebook has one thing going for them, it’s that they make this data they’ve collected available to you in a .zip file. Yes, you can go to your facebook profile and take steps to get your own personal file. The steps are described in this Daily Mail article that also details the ways in which Facebook safeguards and uses your data.

I’ve dubbed it Facebook Permaculture for now, because unless we have the option to back out and delete everything, I’ll rightfully assume the damage has been done and it’s already stored on those big computers and data storage facilities under the helm of those spy programs you might have heard about. Two of them, the Prism and the Upstream programs were just renewed by the US Congress, as CNET reports.

Source: Daily Mail UK

As a European, I was under a false assumption that our privacy laws gave us an extra bit of protection from these data storage collectors. How silly of me to think that the European data protection laws would actually be adhered to. I guess it’s those pesky terms of use we all agree to when using a social media service such as Facebook. Someone smarter than me will have to explain it one day.

How to optain your Facebook data file:

Go to Settings at the top right of your Facebook page.
Click General Account Settings, then click Download a copy of your Facebook data
A .zip file will be created with all the information stored since the day you created your account.
Follow the instructions and wait for a confirmation email. This will take a few minutes and it can take a day to get the final zip file.

It’s no secret that the internet of things doesn’t forget, but when it gets thrown back at you in black and white like this, it just hits you like a slap with a wet rag. I recommend you try it out. Get your data file and see for yourself what is stored for your own good … they say.