Given how many people willingly use Facebook and willingly share information on their profile, we suppose it doesn’t come as a surprise that Facebook and advertisers have mined user information for studies, targeted advertising, and so on. However it seems that even if you’re not a Facebook user, Facebook is still collecting data on you.
This revelation was shared during Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee where he admits that Facebook collects data on non-users as well. When asked if Facebook collects data on people who don’t use the social network, Zuckerberg replied, “In general we collect data on people who are not signed up for Facebook for security purposes.”
Rep. Ben Lujan then said, “You’ve said everyone controls their data, but you’re collecting data on people that are not even Facebook users who have never signed a consent, a privacy agreement.” Zuckerberg replied by restating his previous comments about security, in which he claims that Facebook does so to “prevent people from scraping public information.”
This admission is rather worrying when you consider that this essentially renders the #DeleteFacebook movement useless, because even if you don’t have Facebook or delete Facebook, it seems like Facebook has your data anyway.