How Facebook knows where you’ve been and what you’ve bought We are hearing from somewhere that our smartphone is listening to our conversations. Sometimes we feel that the phone must be listening to our conversation to tell us which advertisement to show us.
The truth is that companies are not only waiting around for us when we talk about jeans; they also already know what we like, what size we wear, which brand, and roughly what time of the year we start buying.
A study has shown that Facebook obtains the personal data of each user with the help of thousands of companies. In a new study by Consumer Reports, researchers found that for every 709 volunteers, an average of 2,230 different companies sent data to Facebook.
The data of the participants in the study was seen in Facebook’s collection, which was provided by 186,892 companies in total.
Volunteers were recruited with the help of The Markup, who used the Download Your Information tool to extract their data from Facebook and provide it to the researchers.
Meta uses it to target related people or users with similar profiles.
According to the researchers, with the help of a “microtargeting” campaign, one of the 96,000 companies registered to collect the data of a particular user was targeted. It was found that the archives of 96 percent of the participants in the study contained information shared by a data broker called Liveramp.
Image source: Consumer Reports
But this is not the only company that brokers all the data. Big sellers like The Home Depot, Walmart, or Amazon are also seen in it.
While small businesses were also underrepresented, one car dealership, for example, was found to be involved with 24,665 people in Texas, or about 10 percent of the study volunteers.
Axiom emerged as the number two data broker in the study, saying it could reach 2.5 billion customers in the marketable world.
He also says that he is proud of his ability to ‘build a complete perception of the consumer for improved consumer identity’.