Do you have an online social networking profile such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat? Do you accomplish most of your personal business online?
If yes, there is a high likelihood that your personally identifiable information aka PII has been compromised in the past. PII is any data that can be used to uniquely identify you as an individual; such as name, terrestrial address, email, or social security number.
Since 2006 several Billion consumer records have been compromised by national brands such as:
- Yahoo (3 Billion user accounts),
- Adult Friend Finder (412 million accounts),
- Uber (57 million users, 600K drivers).
- Facebook (50 million accounts)
The list goes on. Full list here.
In the 21st century the question is no longer if your PII will be compromised, but the question is when!
Recently Facebook was in the news because it was discovered 87 million user profiles were allegedly harvested by Cambridge Analytica without the users’ consent.
How do you determine who has access to your data on Facebook?
Follow these six easy steps:
- Login to your Facebook account, click on the upside down triangle next to the help icon and then click on Settings
- Once in General Account Settings, below the Manage Account option you will need to click on “Download a copy of your Facebook data”
- Once you click download you will be prompted to Start My Archive and then prompted to enter your Facebook password for security reasons.
- Facebook will send you an email once your archive is completed. Depending on the longevity of your Facebook account this may take several hours. You will receive an email to the email address connected to your Facebook account with the subject line “Your Facebook download is ready“
- Download the attachment in the email and unzip the contents to your computer. You will then need to UnZip the file onto your machine then double-click on the index.htm file.
- Under Ads and Applications section you can see all the Applications that have access to your Facebook PII data.
If you want to see specifically if Facebook shared your data with Cambridge Analytica you can check here.
In order to minimize the probability of your data being stolen or misused always think before you click on content online.
Cheers