‘Digital Shadow’ Exposes Exactly How Much Facebook Knows About You

 

“Digital Shadow” is an app on Facebook.  The app itself is an interactive feature for the new game “Watch Dogs”.  But where it was meant as a way for people to interact with “Watch Dogs” it really turned into a eye opening experience about what on your Facebook profile that can be shared and sold as data.

The app shows when you are most active and what type of things you usually post on Facebook.  These include status updates, links, photos or videos, or whether you use apps.  Then based on a certain amount of your past posts, it will show you what days you will post certain things.  The purpose of this is to show you when you are most vulnerable because of an increased activity time.

The app also shows the people who you interact with the most.  These are called Stalkers.  Liabilities are people who often tag you in posts, exposing more of your data.  Obsessions are the people who you interact with but don’t return the same amount of interaction.  Scapegoats are the people who you interact with the least amount, and what the apps says that you “will sacrifice for self-preservation”.  All of these categories of your friends can be further used to expose and mine data about you.

The last few things the app shows that are quite unnerving.  There is a section that continuously tries to guess your password based on your likes, posts, info, and any other information on your profile.  There is also a section that shows how much your profile is worth to companies that sell data.  Both of these things are unnerving because it shows what your online presence is worth and it can show how easy it is to guess your password and access your profile.

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