Did you know Facebook is buying sensitive data, about you, from data brokers?

Facebook gives users little indication it buys far more sensitive data about them, including their income, the types of restaurants they frequent and even how many credit cards are in their wallets.

First off, let me say I am not a fan of Facebook. I value my privacy far more than any service Facebook has to offer.

We all know Facebook collects huge amounts of data on its user’s. But, I’ll bet you didn’t know Facebook also buys data, about you, from data brokers. This is so they can build an even more personal dossier about you.

ProPublica published a story about Facebook’s data broker activities on December 27, 2016. You can read the full story here.

Julia Angwin, Terry Parris Jr. and Surya Mattu, Writing for ProPublica

What the page doesn’t say is that those sources include detailed dossiers obtained from commercial data brokers about users’ offline lives. Nor does Facebook show users any of the often remarkably detailed information it gets from those brokers.

Satterfield said users who don’t want that information to be available to Facebook should contact the data brokers directly. He said users can visit a page in Facebook’s help center, which provides links to the opt-outs for six data brokers that sell personal data to Facebook.