Delete Facebook? Or, Here’s How To Clean Up Those Spying Facebook Apps

by Richard Small

The Ultimate Spy Master: Facebook

It’s time to check the apps that have access to track your data. Follow these steps below and you’ll suddenly discover a trove of applications that have access to different types of data. What is most concerning to me – and it might be quite concerning to you – is that for some of the applications listed, I know for a fact I’ve never installed or granted access Ever! Yet there they are…. siphoning off my data.

In this article we’ll look at those magically siphoning apps. We’ll tell you how to download your Facebook data so you can review what’s being stored on you. I’ll bet it’s more than you realized and… still… you won’t see all the information they have on you.

Here is one: It’s an application that has access to my account details. It’s called “I love Trolling.” Seriously?? I would never allow something like that, I can’t stand trolling, nor can I stand people who troll. Trolling is nothing but cruel and disrespectful and a massive waste of time and energy. I know I’d never install or allow this app, yet there it is.

Strangely, there were a number of apps in my list that I really did not recognize at all. Some have installed themselves, such as Samsung, because I am a Galaxy phone owner. I understand that perhaps one or two apps would have been installed in the past. However, I see five different Samsung apps listed on my account – or should I say five Samsung apps used to be listed. All five are now purged.

A glance at other articles, such as this one from anti-media, indicate some people actually have applications which allow other people in your friends list to siphon YOUR data. This practice is so out of hand and is illegal. I’ve never given my express permission for someone else using an app to collect my data! This is a disgraceful breach of personal privacy for which all these companies should be taken to task.

Given all the recent revelations about Facebook, plus what I have found in just the small amount of investigation I have done, I would simply delete Facebook. A good portion of friends and family still use this platform, though, and some of these friends are half a world away. Also, I am an administrator of some group pages and you can only be an administrator with an account. I could create a separate Facebook account for those activities. But Facebook has (I am sure) already siphoned off and profiled me. So, even deleting my data and account now is pretty pointless. I generally log into my account only once or twice a month, these days, and mostly to wish the odd person a happy birthday and reply to a message or two. I also log in to like some proper pictures that aren’t SnapChat filtered rubbish. (I think my use of Facebook is probably what it was originally sold to us for).

This is nothing new

Cambridge Analytica, the face of an entire scandal in 2018, is just one of many companies who will have a copy of Facebook data after the news story will pass. They might have the data partitioned off and hidden somewhere. The parent company of Cambridge Analytica is Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL). This company, SCL, has a license from the British Government to be able to hold and store classified state secrets. No investigation into this scandal or into SCL or Cambridge Analytica will ever get close to seeing the real data assets that these companies hold, as no warrant would ever trump “National Security.”

Besides the NSA/GCHQ have collected EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING that’s ever been said, written or done digitally and beyond for that matter.

Also, remember such things like the PRISM program that was disclosed by WikiLeaks? As far back as 2011 they’ve been dropping the bombshells that informed us that corporations and social media companies were silently integrated with the intelligence agencies and tracking each of us.

https://wikileaks.org/the-spyfiles.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/14/wikileaks-australia-surveillance-google-julian-assange
https://wikileaks.org/hackingteam/emails/emailid/224564

The links above are to show you just some of the evidence for my claims. It’s actually better for you to do some research for yourself. You’ll truly be shocked and disgusted with what’s been going on. Time to swallow that hard, bitter tasting red pill! (truth)

Some of you may say well I’ve never used Facebook, so they can’t track me. Guess what? They can anyway and they have! As part of this unfettered access and mass data collection, Facebook, at least on Android, has actually been collecting the contact details of all the people who have Facebook Messenger installed on their phones. In fact, they’ve even been collecting Meta data of all the time you’ve been making calls and sending texts with your friend who had Facebook Messenger installed. (I doubt that it’s only metadata to be honest, but this is what’s been publicly revealed so far.)

Ever let a friend use your computer to find them checking their Facebook account? Well they just collected all the cookies on your computer and will analyze them.

So as you can see Facebook and others like Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Twitter have been data harvesting for a very, very long time. They even look at all the Cookies on any computer to see what other websites you’ve been too, or products you’ve looked at so that they can sell this data on to other corporations or simply allow the intelligence agencies to update their profile on you.

A few years ago I stopped using Facebook Messenger on my phone as I simply didn’t trust Facebook anymore and had the suspicion that they would probably be using the microphone to listen in to my calls. When I attempted to delete Facebook Messenger on Samsung Galaxy devices, you can’t! What? That’s right you can’t actually delete it! It’s been baked into the Operating System so that –get this– it’s a factory-installed application.

The best I could do at that time was try uninstall which would at least downgrade the application to a previous version (which would open more security risks) and never, ever use it or Facebook from my phone. Only by rooting the phone would I have been able to remove the application entirely.

How to remove Facebook apps

So here are some pictures of my Facebook account and how to remove the applications that are spying on you:

 

1. Log in to your account and go here to give you the dropdown box in step 2.
 

 

 
2. Access the settings of your Facebook account.
 

3. On the right hand side, click the Apps button.
 
4. Ok, so here you will be shown a list of all the apps which are linked to your Facebook profile.

All the ones in RED I have no idea where these have come from! I did not install these applications ever.

As you can see if you’ve ever added a dating app or game in the past and since deleted the app and even the account, they STILL have access to your data if you don’t come in here and clean it up. (Clearly you can see I don’t use my account very often. These dating apps have been on there for a very long time. Most are rubbish, as are the games.)

If you click the Pencil Icon next to each one it will allow you to review and edit what settings and data these apps have. If you’d like to keep any I would recommend checking the permissions.

To actually select these you need to double click each one, so that it’s not just highlighted, but the tick box is then selected! You can’t click the tick box directly. *Strange*

Once you’ve selected all of the apps you wish to remove, click the delete button at the top. (I deleted all but two of the 45 apps here.)

NOTE: There is one more app that is active and completely hidden. I’ve just seen it within my data dump: Instagram. So: they don’t give you any control over how this app sees or uses your data. In fact, within my data dump I can see advertisements I have clicked and they are from Instagram, not Facebook. (Yet no other Instagram data shows within my downloaded archive.)

4. You will be presented with a popup box asking you to confirm deleting these apps, also, there is the option to tick another box which will go through and purge all posts, pictures and other things these apps may have added to your account in the past. (I purged them all.)

That’s it! You’ve now finally cleared up all the applications that had access to your profile data.

Downloading and Reviewing your Facebook data

Whilst I was doing this I decided I would also download ALL my Facebook data that they are willing to tell me they have on me. To do this you would go back to the settings page following steps 1 & 2. From there you can see this little option:

Here is a link I was emailed by Facebook whilst it was generating my archive to be downloaded: https://www.facebook.com/help/405183566203254

It’s a ton of different areas it covers, and to be honest, this is only the public stuff they are willing to dare share, I bet there is plenty more it’s capturing that it DOESN’T let you see.

Facebook ISN’T Deleting Data and doesn’t respect your wishes

So I am reviewing my archive from above and I can see that I have a conversation with a previous ex- from 2012 that I know for a fact I deleted years ago, or at least I requested it was deleted from Facebook years ago! So, here is more proof that not only are they capturing everything within your life they are also not forgetting anything you’ve instructed them to do so. (And they haunt you with your exes…)

However, I can’t see any conversation from another more recent ex-, for which in 5 years we most certainly did talk over Facebook and send each other information. I only see her within group conversations? Strange, so even this archive isn’t 100% correct as it has the ex#1, from above, with whom I most certainly deleted the conversations. But with this ex#2, my request to delete the data is respected? (Are they wanting me to get back with ex#1? Do they know me better than I do? I’m starting to wonder… they have all my data, after all…)

Sure they will have data on backup tapes in cold storage, but I don’t think they are holding data in cold storage for 5+ years! Besides, they’re doing that for everyone? That’s expensive! Also, this data I am discussing here isn’t from cold storage as they’ve managed to produce this archive for me in less than an hour, and it’s approximately 500MB.

There is so much more data that they are holding on to still as they have hyperlinks embedded all over the shop that I must click to activate downloading it. So if your thinking of downloading it all and then deleting your account, be warned you have 3 days to find every link and download the attachment directly, otherwise you’ll loose it for ever, but it probably will stay on there system under a secret profile of you.

Don’t think Facebook has a secret version of your profile? Well if they’re tracking your cookies and web history, where is this being stored? It’s not within your public Facebook account and it’s not within this downloaded archive either? There is WAY more they have that you’re not being shown. Use a little critical thinking and you’ll discover the truth.

So this archive isn’t ALL your data for a start, which is more proof they just don’t care. They’ve given you “just enough” to make you think you have it all.

Keep Facebook From Tracking You

Finally, what else can you do to turn off Facebook’s tracking? Well Firefox has recently come out with a new extension that attempts to block Facebook from looking at the data within your history. The aggressive practices of these Social Media companies, means non-profits like FireFox are trying to help you become more secure with your privacy. They also have a really good DoNotTrack policy baked in to Firefox and enabled by default.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-container/

The best method of stopping their spying is to stop using their platform. But as discussed above, this won’t completely stop them because their tactics are so aggressive they will use OTHER people to spy on you.

Like many other people starting to take a good look at this problem. I am only just scratching the surface of this systemic problem that is Facebook. They’ve turned in to the Too-Big-To-Fail corporation like the banks.

Whatever you decide to do with Facebook– delete your account or “just” clean it up, I hope this post has been informative for you.

Meanwhile, if you delete Facebook, you might miss all those photos of cute kitties. So here are some kitties to keep you company during withdrawal.

Also, please, please share this article far and wide and ALL over Facebook. It’s only decent for people who are using the platform to be informed and given the opportunity to make these changes and give actual consent to their data being abused.

yogaesoteric

July 28, 2019

 

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