I’m a big advocate for data privacy and I left Facebook many years ago without feeling the need to go back. However, there’s several local groups and a couple of local businesses that specifically communicate via Facebook that I’d like to interact with.
This presents a problem - I have to use the platform to interact with these people but I don’t want to use the platform. So how do I keep my data safe from Zucks greedy hands? So far I’m thinking:
- use a throwaway email or email that is specifically for fb
- only access via Firefox inprivate browser and use addons to clean cookies after every session
- utilise ad blockers in said browser
- set fb privacy settings accordingly to opt out of ad personalisation, othrr site fb logins etc
- potentially only access via VPN but that might be cumbersome
- maybe do all of this via android work profile but not sure if that’s much benefit
Anything else I can do to remain reasonably safe?
Tell those local businesses that you really want to support and follow them, but that you boycott Meta and the reasons that you do.
Honestly there’s so many reasons businesses should also avoid Meta, like the fact Meta is literally collecting and selling their most valuable business data about their customers to other competing businesses. Tell them for their own good that Meta is not their friend, it might help them at first to get exposure, but only long enough to get that data and sell it off to a bigger fish.
To add to it,
Not META, but there are videos of small business owners explaining how amazon used their data to set up its own thing as their direct rivals, then manipulated their ratings, virtually stealing their clients too.
Tell them that selling their data to thurd parties is one of the biggest revenue streams of META, that you are NOT ok exposing your own business to such risks and that as a serious business, they should be wary of giving data to data selling / leasing social networks as well.
Some friends had to restart their business because their only online presence was on Instagram and their account got banned. So all their sales dropped to almost 0 overnight
Yup. Now I also get that exposure and engagement are important to small businesses, but to that end they shouldn’t lock themselves to one place either. Point out the benefits of more open solutions like Bluesky and Mastodon, and the benefits of setting up their own hosted site/blog that they can then broadcast on social media but slowly cut them out as a middle man by pushing customers to their site directly.
And most certainly businesses should never use the “algorithm” on social media to collect data or get “free” advertising such as those “like/repost to win” style posts. Those are not free advertising, those are doing free data collection work for Meta.
Check the facebook conrainer app for firefox
Yes, it’s great, and the https://www.fbpurity.com/ extension helps, too.
Pro tips, ty! I was hoping for something mobile friendly but this will definitely help!
Heh. I explicitly DON’T and I feel it’s those businesses and people’s problem. There are other methods. Not everyone uses Facebook.
I refuse.
First of all, figure out your threat model. What data are you trying to keep secret from Facebook? What will happen to you if Facebook gets that data? What lengths are reasonable to prevent that outcome?
Then figure out how to consistently prevent that data from leaking.
I don’t want Facebook knowing my address, name, age, and face - basically I don’t want to be doxxed. I’m not willing to go through the effort of hiding my IP, so I’m willing to give up on that, but the others are easy enough to lie about.
The assumption that there is only one kind of threat model relevant to a person / business is a bad assumption.
If you have different threat models for different data, then you should enumerate them and work through each.
Facebook has ghost profiles of non Facebook users because of tracking embedded in “like” buttons on websites. If you wanted to go full paranoid I would suggest using an extension to change your user agent. But it is probably worth identifying the specific threat vectors you are concerned about.
i’d probably opt for a cheap android tablet that’s only used for fb, nothing else.
and in ‘full paranoid’ mode, i’d also avoid using my own home or work wifi with it, too. the library’s public hotspot is convenient enough to both locations.
This.
Probably the best strategy to minimise risk from data pilfering.
I haven’t used it but Firefox has containers to allow you to separate your browsing activities which are isolated from each other. You need to install the Firefox Multi-Account Containers extension in order to use them.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/
Don’t use any real data and do as little as possible, but that strongly depends on the level of interacting you want to do.
Use a different browser profile entirely. I’d also reccomend LibreWolf because there’s better fingerprinting protection, to help stop them from connecting dots between your other browser profiles.
This is extremely relevant to me as well.
I need even less interaction than most. I just need to check a private group I’m part of for events. Any way to extract that info into something else nicely?
I see the recommendations for FBPurity and the Firefox container, both of which I’ll use on desktop. I was hoping for something for mobile too but just desktop is probably fine
Maybe a throwaway email address and use TAILS as an anonymiser which also manages the cookie cleanup. Every network session is a new clean invocation.
Maybe try using Librewolf with the Facebook container add-on?
Does Facebook still have an official onion url?
What would make you unsafe? What data do you want to keep away from Facebook?
Maybe safe is the wrong word in my post. I mean keeping the data safe from meta in the respect that I don’t want them to have it. Their record in data privacy is not so great so I’m keen to keep my data away from Meta if I can.
What specific data?
You can’t keep information you put on their platform or your habits of use on that platform “safe” from it.
