Facebook purchases additional sensitive data about members of its social network but is unclear about it. Additional data such as the user's income, the types of restaurants they visit and the number of credit cards they own is purchased from external data providers that provide 'offline' data.
However, the company isn't honest about it, according Jeffrey Chester, CEO of the American privacy watchdog Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) in an interview with Business Insider.
Since a while, Facebook shows users suggestions of categories of interests they can add to their profile. This data also be used by advertisers to better target potential customers. According to CDD, Facebook is unclear about where the information from these categories comes from.
"Facebook is bundling a dozen different data companies to target an individual customer, and an individual should have access to that bundle as well," according to Chester.
Facebook argues, " that it doesn't tell users about the third-party data because it's widely available and was not collected by Facebook", and also because, "the data providers we work with generally make their categories available across many different ad platforms, not just on Facebook."
Users who don't want that specific data about them is shared should contact each data provider according to Facebook. The social network has a page available that links to data providers where users can unsubscribe.
Facebook also explains that when users see an ad on the social network they can click a dropdown menu and then choose "Why am I seeing this?" . This will bring them to a page that identifies some of the reasons why they're seeing the ad. Including whether they are part of an audience that was provided to Facebook by one of the external data providers.
