Facebook Has A “Secret File” About You and Here’s How You Can View It

How would you feel if you found out that someone has been stalking you? Would you feel disturbed if that said “stalker” has had access to not only the photos you’ve shared on social media but even some very personal files such as your banking transactions?

I’m assuming you’d immediately take action and confront that person. Besides, no one has the right to invade your privacy, right? Well surprise, surprise – that “stalker” could actually be social media itself.

Take it from user Nick Whigham who personally discovered that Facebook has in fact amassed a huge amount of data about him – and many of those are things he didn’t even know existed in the first place.

So Facebook has a “secret file” for every user? Apparently, yes!

Whigham, who works as a New Zealand Herald reporter, shared he was truly surprised about the unexpected discovery. The “secret file” from Facebook, said Whigham, contained a lot of very personal details.

He said:

“It included scanned copies of lease forms from a previous rental property I must’ve sent to my buddies over Messenger, my current tenant ledger report, an old monthly billing statement for my home broadband, screenshots of banking transfers and seemingly endless web pages of all the banal conversations I have ever had on the platform.

“It’s an odd feeling to think that, in some ways, Facebook knows you better than you know yourself.”

Furthermore, Facebook also stores facial recognition data, names and numbers of your contacts, sites you’ve visited online, and others.

Sounds pretty scary? It definitely is!

Here’s how you can check out the “secret file” yourself:

1. Click the small “down” triangle on the top-right corner of Facebook.
2. Click Settings and go to the General tab.
3. At the bottom part, click “Download a copy of your Facebook data.”

Once you’ve done all that, wait for an hour or so and you will receive an email informing you your data is already available for downloading.

According to Facebook, it’s part of what they do to keep the platform free.

As indicated in the site’s data policy:

“We work with third-party companies who help us provide and improve our Services or who use advertising or related products, which makes it possible to operate our companies and provide free services to people around the world.”

Well how do you feel about this issue, folks? Is it fair for Facebook to be doing this in the first place? Drop a comment below and tell us about it.