Despite Facebook’s recent virtue-signaling on privacy, the company does not make it clear to people that when they deactivate their accounts, its vampiric data connections continue to suck new information from advertisers, revealing people’s personal interests, recent purchases and other interactions. And the company has no data retention policy limiting the length of time it keeps deactivated accounts and the photos and other data associated with them frozen in virtual cryogenic stasis.

Facebook refers to this intravenous data drip from advertiser partners as “Your Off-Facebook Activity.” It is comprised of data reflecting interactions people have with other companies that those firms pass along to Facebook, such as information showing that someone registered for a website, bought a product or signed up for a streaming subscription.

“That practice is shady in the best of times, but it seems ridiculous to do that when someone has deactivated their account,” said Justin Brookman, director of privacy and technology policy at Consumer Reports.

Account deactivation is distinctly different from deletion. When people deactivate their accounts, their profile disappears from view of other people, but not Facebook. Ultimately, Facebook views deactivation as a sign that a user may return to reactivate the account at some point, which they can do simply by logging into the platform. While account deletion is permanent, deactivation is intended to allow people to return to their account, complete with pre-existing friend connections and other settings still intact as though they never left.

When people deactivate their accounts, “from Facebook’s perspective, all you’re saying is, ‘I don’t want to use the social media product of Facebook,’” said Nii Ahene, chief strategy officer at Tinuiti, an agency focused on advertising on Facebook and other platforms. So, in his assessment of Facebook’s possible perspective on the subject, the logical extension of that is something like, “We’re still going to create this profile around you.”

While deactivated accounts are not visible to others, Facebook handles them just like an active account. That means the company’s data policy — which allows for new data to be added to accounts — applies to deactivated accounts in the same way it does active ones. And it means that …read more

Source:: Digiday