Has anyone actually downloaded their data from large companies?

[Statik]

As I'm sure lots of people know, big websites/companies (i.e. Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, etc) all have functions that allow you to download and view the personal data they have on you. Has anyone actually taken apart in this? Were you shocked by the results?

 

I downloaded my Snap, Instagram, Facebook, and Google and the results were pretty shocking.

 

Snapchat

I found they were the "best". Obviously it appears that no photos are saved (asides from memories, etc). But they had my "recent" message logs (i.e. Time, Who, and What type of message). The only real info I could find that really went back was they had logs of every website you visit from a Snapchat link (i.e. the ads, etc), as well as the name/username of ever person you've added, requested, and deleted.

 

They also have logs of ever story I've viewed dating back to June 03.

 

Facebook

This one was pretty eye opening. They had every like, comment, message (including photos, gifs, and stickers), and much, much more, dating back to when I made my account 11 years ago. They even kept logs of the IP, Browser, and Longitude and Latitude of every time I've clicked the login button. There was lists of website's (an entire folder actually) dedicated to my "off facebook activity". I even found logs saying "On 2014-06-21 you watched -insert video title here- for 61 seconds". The zip file was 1.6GB, so the list goes on.. And I consider myself to have a pretty small Facebook footprint. It was truly eye opening. There was clear logs for every marketplace page I've visited, and every group I've looked at.

 

Instagram

IG appeared to have very similar info to Facebook (surprise, surprise), but everything was in .JSON files, so it was much harder to read than FBs HTML Documents.

 

Google

Boy oh boy. This one was straight fucked. Listing everything would take forever, but some of the big ones were, what appears to be entire search, image search, YouTube search, Google Maps Search, and News search history going all the way back to my accounts creation. Yes, I got to look at 15 year old me's google image search history... There was also a .MBOX file that contains every email, including spam and trash, again dating back to my accounts creation. This also tied directly into my YouTube, and my search, like, comment, upload, and watch history. Plus more.

 

Asides from IP addresses and Long/Lat of logins, and my Google maps history, they were all fairly lacking in the "location" sections (keep that location services off kids).

 

 

There was plenty more to dig through but I'm not really here to list it all. I knew it would be bad, but it's really eye opening the stuff they have. And that's just what they're telling us they have. I found it interesting on Facebook/Snap/IG there was no chat logs of people you've deleted/blocked. I assume they have them, but just aren't giving them forth. My "search" history in a few places on Facebook was also kind of patchy due to me constantly clearing it.

 

All in all it was a pretty eye opening experience, and it really backs up my previous notion of phasing primarily Google and Facebook out of my life. Has anyone here done similar? Was it the same experience that I had?

 

 

 

[DarkEnergy]

I don't use much social media other than reddit which is feeling more and more like a "social media" than what it used to. Google had the most information from me including purchase location data shown on google maps for the time I briefly used Google Pay. I use google much less, my main email address isn't from google anymore. I don't use google chrome, hardly use their search (startpage is a pretty good google alternative), don't use their cloud storage, or even their contacts app on my android phone. I've disabled apps and many permissions for google app and many others. The only thing I use frequently from google is android os (of course), google maps, keyboard (I'm a sucker for the swipe functionality) and messages (I've had serious issues with FOSS messaging apps in the past).

 

If you ever want to close social media accounts, I recommend removing your information from them first and/or populating it with fake information before deleting. Or just leave it at that and don't delete the actual accounts.

[kelvinhall05]

I am intrigued. I want to see what I was googling when I was 10  

[divito]

I did Facebook awhile back; nothing all that noteworthy or surprising really.

 

I guess I can check my Google but probably nothing out of the ordinary.

[Tristerin]

I left FB after having kids (no time, and I realized just how narcissistic it was allowing me to be) and this is my only social media.  I need to figure out how to delete Googles files of me searching for midget pr0n however.....

[Statik]

1 hour ago, DarkEnergy said:

I don't use much social media other than reddit which is feeling more and more like a "social media" than what it used to. Google had the most information from me including purchase location data shown on google maps for the time I briefly used Google Pay. I use google much less, my main email address isn't from google anymore. I don't use google chrome, hardly use their search (startpage is a pretty good google alternative), don't use their cloud storage, or even their contacts app on my android phone. I've disabled apps and many permissions for google app and many others. The only thing I use frequently from google is android os (of course), google maps, keyboard (I'm a sucker for the swipe functionality) and messages (I've had serious issues with FOSS messaging apps in the past).

 

If you ever want to close social media accounts, I recommend removing your information from them first and/or populating it with fake information before deleting. Or just leave it at that and don't delete the actual accounts.

That's fair. I'm migrating away from google too. I've been moving away from my Gmail, don't use google search, and don't use chrome. And at some point I need to grow up and delete my FB/IG. And your last point is interesting. I never thought of that before.

 

What kind of FOSS messaging issues did you have? Just they didn't work well? Or bigger than that?

 

35 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

I need to figure out how to delete Googles files of me searching for midget pr0n however.....

Yeah I had a little bit of fun with Ctrl + F and some key words....

[SnooedKiwi]

I have. It was hard to download all my photos from google photos at once so I requested a google photos request to download and they sent me 20 zip files with all my photos.(Still easier than downloading them through google photos)

[DarkEnergy]

3 hours ago, Statik said:

What kind of FOSS messaging issues did you have? Just they didn't work well? Or bigger than that?

I tried QKSMS and Silence, both of which failed to send text messages to certain phone numbers for no reason. I also tried Signal which was able to send text messages fine but images kept being compressed. Someone would send me an image and if it was a picture of text I needed to read, it'd just be pixels. I tried changing image size settings within the app but nothing worked. It's been a few months since then, may give Signal a second shot.

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, Statik said:

As I'm sure lots of people know, big websites/companies (i.e. Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, etc) all have functions that allow you to download and view the personal data they have on you. Has anyone actually taken apart in this? Were you shocked by the results?

 

I downloaded my Snap, Instagram, Facebook, and Google and the results were pretty shocking.

 

 

I downloaded google once. 

 

The one that was kinda disappointing was discord, as it only keeps YOUR part of the conversation. So it's all out of context.

 

If anyone wanted to take someone to court over something that happened in discord, they'd have to get it from Discord directly with timestamps because getting it from the users will never provide the context of the conversations.

[Statik]

42 minutes ago, DarkEnergy said:

I tried QKSMS and Silence, both of which failed to send text messages to certain phone numbers for no reason. I also tried Signal which was able to send text messages fine but images kept being compressed. Someone would send me an image and if it was a picture of text I needed to read, it'd just be pixels. I tried changing image size settings within the app but nothing worked. It's been a few months since then, may give Signal a second shot.

Hmm that's interesting. I just did a text on Signal and a photo appeared to send fine to me, and video chat on Signal worked great compared to WhatsApp which gave me lots of issues. My only issue now is getting people to actually use signal haha.

 

13 minutes ago, Kisai said:

The one that was kinda disappointing was discord, as it only keeps YOUR part of the conversation. So it's all out of context.

 

If anyone wanted to take someone to court over something that happened in discord, they'd have to get it from Discord directly with timestamps because getting it from the users will never provide the context of the conversations.

Hmm. That's kind of odd? Granted if someone was taking someone to court over something they could probably just pull their own records as well and kind of piece it together like a puzzle? Not that I'm complaining though. The less information the better IMO.

[TetraSky]

6 hours ago, Statik said:

dating back to when I made my account 11 years ago. They even kept logs of the IP, Browser, and Longitude and Latitude of every time I've clicked the login button.

Legit scary. Why is it necessary for any company to keep that stuff for so many years.

This is why I can't bring myself to not trust Facebook and so many other such "services". (where if it's free, you're the product)

The google one keeping deleted emails too... wtf... Why.

[George Vella]

I did it and trust me, it's very creepy about all the data they hoard about you

 

[danomicar]

I agree, its a bit unnerving that Google is happy to remember the youtube videos i watched when i was 15. I haven't used Facebook in years so I doubt the data that they have for me is useful anymore. 

[IntMD]

14 hours ago, Tristerin said:

I left FB after having kids (no time, and I realized just how narcissistic it was allowing me to be) and this is my only social media.  I need to figure out how to delete Googles files of me searching for midget pr0n however.....

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/465

 

 

 

 

[kelvinhall05]

So it's been about 16 hours since I requested my data from Google. Still haven't gotten the email with download links yet.

 

I am very curious what I'll find. I just hope it doesn't scare me how much stuff they have, mainly because it would be a massive pita for me to transfer everything to a new account. Obviously not going to share anything specific here, lol. Mostly just curious what kind of shit I was looking up seven years ago.

[Statik]

22 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

So it's been about 16 hours since I requested my data from Google. Still haven't gotten the email with download links yet.

 

I am very curious what I'll find. I just hope it doesn't scare me how much stuff they have, mainly because it would be a massive pita for me to transfer everything to a new account. Obviously not going to share anything specific here, lol. Mostly just curious what kind of shit I was looking up seven years ago.

I've started transferring my stuff from Gmail to Protonmail. It wasn't as bad as I thought. I moved all the primary stuff over, and a few things I just have automatic forwarding setup. I plan to just keep my Gmail for all my spammy promotional emails I get, or subscriptions I don't really care about. I also used this time to setup my password manager better and have randomly generated, secure passwords on every site I use. Gave me a good piece of mind.

 

Do you use your googe a lot? It took them I feel like an hour or two to send me mine, and it was 3GB+ worth of zip files, so you might just have a zip version of War and Peace coming your way..

[kelvinhall05]

Just now, Statik said:

I've started transferring my stuff from Gmail to Protonmail. It wasn't as bad as I thought. I moved all the primary stuff over, and a few things I just have automatic forwarding setup. I plan to just keep my Gmail for all my spammy promotional emails I get, or subscriptions I don't really care about. I also used this time to setup my password manager better and have randomly generated, secure passwords on every site I use. Gave me a good piece of mind.

 

Do you use your googe a lot? It took them I feel like an hour or two to send me mine, and it was 3GB+ worth of zip files, so you might just have a zip version of War and Peace coming your way..

Yeah, I've used my Google account for everything I've used a computer for in the last like 8 years or something. All my accounts are tied to it and whatnot.

[kelvinhall05]

Alright, update. Got my data from Google.

 

I freaked the fuck out for a few minutes when I saw nearly 40GB of stuff to download. God damn. Turns out (and I confirmed this when I did download it all) that like 90% of that or something is Google Photos, lol. A little bit of Drive thrown in but not that bad. In hindsight I should've expected this, but whatever.

 

As for the actual stuff I would consider "my data", I haven't looked very thoroughly (mostly just skimming folder/file names) but there isn't that much juicy shit or whatever there. Google Assistant recordings are there, but I sort of expected that, and I don't really care (oh no, someone is going to blackmail me with a 2018 recording of me asking my phone how many liters is 440 cubic inches or whatever). My browsing history is also there, but again, I expected that and idc. Maybe I need to comb through it more thoroughly but honestly, I personally don't find it that bad. I know a lot of people are very privacy-focused and I know at least one person is going to tell me how "oH bUt ThEy'Re JuSt GoNnA sElL yOuR dAtA, yOu ShOuLd MoVe FrOm GoOgLe", and I get where they're coming from, but my entire fucking "online life" or whatever is tied to my Google account. Even if I wanted to move to another account, it would be so much work, and it is not worth it to me at all.

 

tl;dr: Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, mostly all stuff I knew/expected would be there.

[darshh]

Facebook is really the worst social media made 

[Adorable Cat]

I checked out my google account data thing a while back and found audio recordings from trying to train Google Assistant when I was like 12 and some of the stuff I posted on Google Plus way back then.

 

the cringe probably reduced my lifespan by years.

[DarkEnergy]

On 7/2/2020 at 9:45 AM, Statik said:

I've started transferring my stuff from Gmail to Protonmail.

Nice! You went strait to the most highly recommended privacy-centric email provider. I've heard very good things about them, unfortunately they're a bit too pricey for me.

[kelvinhall05]

12 minutes ago, DarkEnergy said:

Nice! You went strait to the most highly recommended privacy-centric email provider. I've heard very good things about them, unfortunately they're a bit too pricey for me.

They have a free tier and I think most people use it.

[DildorTheDecent]

Looking through my Apple data rn.

 

Highschool me was a weird fellow.

[Statik]

On 7/3/2020 at 10:06 PM, DarkEnergy said:

Nice! You went strait to the most highly recommended privacy-centric email provider. I've heard very good things about them, unfortunately they're a bit too pricey for me.

Just like what @kelvinhall05 said. They have a free tier that offers up to 500GB of "storage", so I'm going with that. I really like them and they have great things planned. They're also releasing a cloud storage ProtonDrive later this year which I'm very interested in. Fantastic experience so far.

 

I've also put in some work to getting all my browser extensions really dialed in lately and overall I'm enjoying it. It's a good piece of mind, and a very interesting topic to read up on/implement into your life.