Facebook Generously Lets Users Download Their Own Data

Facebook’s 850 million users will be granted access to even more of their own archived data after the social network announced an update to its ‘Download Your Information’ tool.

First launched in October 2010, the tool was one of three applications in a drive to give users “complete control” over their posted content.

While ‘Download Your Information’ initially allowed users to request a Zip file of all photos, videos and posts ever shared, Thursday’s update will open up a history of previously used names, friend requests made and IP addresses used to log in with. Facebook said on its Privacy page that the feature will be gradually rolled out and available from Account Settings.

Privacy concerns

Facebook’s move appears to be motivated by growing concerns from privacy campaigners, who argue that the social networking giant retains an excessive amount of information on its users.

Last year, Austrian student Max Schrems filed 22 complaints to the Irish data protection commissioner after he received a CD from the social network which contained 1,200 items of personal data on him, much of which he believed had been deleted. He also set up the Europe Versus Facebook group, which campaigns for transparency, data minimisation and greater user control on Facebook.

“This is a first partial success for our campaign and we see this as a first step in the right direction, but at the same time Facebook is still not [fulfilling] its obligation under European law to grant users access to all personal data,” the group said in a post.

It goes on to argue that many data categories will only be shown in the Timeline or Activity Log and not in its raw form, thereby only offering a processed form of information that does not hint at the deleted information that still supposedly exists on Facebook.

“If we would have gotten our data in such a format we would have been unable to file the complaints against Facebook,” said Schrems. “We would have never found out that Facebook is still keeping deleted information. This seems to be exactly the reason why Facebook is not giving all user access to the data.”

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