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24-Year-Old Asks Facebook For His Data, Gets 1,200 PDFs

Posted by Soulskill on from the ask-and-ye-shall-receive dept.

chicksdaddy writes "Be careful of what you ask for. That's a lesson Max Schrems of Vienna, Austria learned the hard way when he sent a formal request to Facebook for a copy of every piece of personal information that the social network had collected on him, as required under European law. After a wait, the 24-year-old law student got what he was seeking: a CD with all his data stored on it — 1,222 files in all. The collection of PDFs was roughly the length of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, but told a more mundane story: a record of Schrems' years-long relationship with the world's largest social network, including reams of data he had deleted. Now Schrems is pushing Facebook to disclose even more of what it knows."

3 of 291 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It should be illegal..... by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Informative

    Indeed. In europe and canada an individual has final say on their personal information. And if it's deleted the company must delete any backup or cached data relating to that person too.

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    Om, nomnomnom...
  2. Re:It should be illegal..... by nitehawk214 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Moderating a Funny post Informative, that should be illegal.

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    I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
  3. Re:There is a clear difference by a+whoabot · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think I agree with you. I never understood why people complain about what sites do when all of what they do is in the terms.

    From what I can tell, pretty much everything there is to know about how your data is used by Facebook is on:

    http://www.facebook.com/legal/terms
    http://www.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy
    http://developers.facebook.com/policy/
    http://www.facebook.com/ad_guidelines.php

    All that comes in at about 15000 words. Sure, this will probably take you more than a few minutes to read and understand, unless you are Lt. Cmdr. Data. But if it is so important to you, than why not spend the time?

    I have an feeling that people are either too lazy for their own good, or just like to see injustice where there is none because they like the feeling of righteous indignation

    Sorry, I don't usually rant; please, anyone, do not take this post as impugning you personally; and I am probably missing many good counter-points.