KIYC: Finding what information Facebook knows about you

With controversy surrounding Facebook's collection of users' information, it is possible to find out exactly how much they know.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said this week that Facebook offers a tool that lets people see and remove all of the information they put into the social media site.
Being able to find that requires a user to go their Facebook settings and clicking on "download a copy of your Facebook data" and then clicking the link that says "download archive."
In the archive is a variety of information that isn't surprising to find -- when a user has logged into Facebook, their posts and messages.
The archive also has knowledge of not only the advertisements a user has clicked on, but also which advertisers have downloaded the user's info.
This means that advertisers could be able to see your friends list and your phone contacts if you have them synced to your account.
Cybersecurity author Scott Schober says the public is only now learning the extent of the data being collected on Facebook's users.
"They really know us: Our likes, maybe as much as our mates, that's how well they know us," says Schober. "Our interests, our buying patterns. That's really scary."
Kane in your Corner says two things should be kept in mind while using social media: First, the more convenient a user wants their social media experience to be, the less private it will be. Second, nothing is free. Whenever a product like Facebook exists that seems to be free, it usually means the user is the product that is being sold to advertisers.