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It’s easy to forget that there was once a world without Facebook. Pre-2004 seems almost like the dark ages. What did we women do without being able to share our witty and random thoughts with all our friends? Facebook today isn’t just central to how we share our lives, it’s central to how we connect with our peers. The downside of this interconnectivity, though, is the lack of privacy.
Because today’s culture has become so rooted in Facebook, the line of privacy has become blurred. Can your mom see the same thing your best friend can see? What can employers see when they Google your name? What kind of information do businesses and advertisers see?
An important part of Facebook that’s often forgotten is the publicity. You can control if your posts and profile are public. According to the Facebook “Privacy Basics,” you can go to your profile and select the “View As” button on the lower right corner of your cover photo to see what is visible to different people. With this feature, you can see what your friends can see versus what the public can see. You can also use the “View As Specific Person” function to get exact details of what individuals see when they are viewing your profile. According to the website, “Your profile will automatically update to show a preview of what that friend would see if they visited your profile.”
You can also control what information on your basic profile is public versus private. You can choose the audience of specific posts and give certain friends permission to see personal information such as your relationship status, birthday, and phone number. This can be helpful if you don’t want your grandma looking at your Facebook profile and asking why your profile describes your relationship as, “It’s complicated.”
Privacy settings for advertisers, however, become a little more complex. It can be confusing to continuously see flashing ads about “selling your eggs” or “buying the perfect wedding dress” when you have no interest in those things. According to Facebook’s Privacy Basics, “Some ads you see on Facebook are shown to you because you’re in the group of people who fit a description set by an advertiser.” For example, the reason you’re getting so many eggs donor or surrogate ads may be due to your position as a woman in the early 20s demographic.
USA Today says that advertisers on Facebook choose the kind of people they want to reach based on their location, age. and interests. If you fall into any of the predetermined categories, then you will most likely receive those advertisements.
Facebook also states that ads are determined based on your interests. According to the website, the advertisements you see are “based on things such as pages liked on Facebook as well as activity on apps and websites off Facebook.” Essentially, Facebook can tell which other websites you are visiting. To do this, Facebook uses text files known as “cookies.” Cookies are a way of recognizing your personal computer.
According to the BBC, “When you visit a site that uses cookies for the first time, a cookie is downloaded onto your PC. The next time you visit that site, your PC checks to see if it has a cookie that is relevant (that is, one containing the site name) and sends the information contained in that cookie back to the site.”
What does this mean for your Facebook ads? It means that if you once visited a website to look for thigh high socks for your Halloween costume, then you’re most likely going to get ads for socks for months. So, the next time you open your Facebook page, be aware. The person looking at that post about your next brunch trip may not be someone you want seeing it.
