Facebook has been a significant part of our daily lives as more and more people become consumed on this social media site. People spend hours every day browsing profiles, viewing pictures, and sending messages to old and new friends. Whatever is posted on Facebook is considered public and can easily be viewed by everyone on your list of friends or followers. Of course, if you have filters and settings, then you can control what other people see. However, did you know that Facebook tracks your unposted status messages and comments?
Imagine one day you decided to post say something on Facebook about what you feel at that moment. Then, a few seconds later, you decided to erase it. Is it gone forever? Surprisingly, Facebook keeps track of whatever you type on their website. Did you think twice before posting that nasty comment about your old friend back in High School? Facebook already saved that just after you typed it. If you ask me, they shouldn't keep track of it. If you decided to delete it, then you decided not to put it out there. It's only for your own keeping.
When confronted with the issue, Facebook responded that they are doing this in order to analyze their users in terms of their behavior and they way they interact with the Facebook system. Once they better understand their users, they will be able to tweak and improve the system so that the user will have a better experience. That's what everyone says. Still, the users must be informed of this hidden service, if you ask me.
It's no surprise that this information came from two former Facebook employees. They just want the world to know about this “hidden” tracking system that is in place. A little background about these two employees, the first one was a Ph.D student from Carnegie Mellon. This person was working in the software engineering department as a summer intern. The other person was quite the opposite as he/she has been working in the company for years as an established data scientist.
According to these two former employees, they studied up to 5 million English – speaking users. The tracking system activates once you type in the status update bar, a reply to a comment thread, or even just a comment on a picture. If you are using Gmail or have an idea on how it works, it has a “Draft” function that instantly saves whatever email you are typing in. If you happen to have power interruption or loss of connection, the draft is saved and you can continue writing your email at a later time.
If you want to be sure that Facebook and other Google products in tracking user data and connecting it to your IP address, you should make use of a VPN Service Provider. A Virtual Private Network ensures that you are anonymous when browsing online. This makes your connection secure and all your personal data is safe as long as you're connected through a VPN. Faceless.me is a VPN service provider that you can count on.