ISP

You’ve Been Targeted!

THE UNDERWORLD OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Being targeted by Marketing isn’t new. But, having your psychological profile, behaviors, interests and personal details gathered, analyzed and targeted is. Most of us are aware by now that the Trump Presidential Campaign boasts of winning the election through data: collecting, analyzing and then pushing micro-targeted messaging through Social Media, mainly Facebook.

If you haven’t kept up on the story, read these for a twilight zone-ish experience:

Our Social Media and Internet activity is being transformed into psychological and behavioral profiles. These profiles are then used to strategically target voters based on their personality and preferences. Some voters respond to positive ads while others respond to negative, etc…

One of the most effective political strategies, I’ve witnessed, is to push a narrative that reinforces a fear. Some campaigns even manufacture and plant fears. Once a sense of fear is created and a person believes they can trust you to remove that threat, you’ve got them! Facts and truth become irrelevant. Emotions take over and they are no longer receptive to information that doesn’t align with their fear. After all, who wouldn’t err on the side of protecting themselves and their loved ones from a possible threat?  The second part of the strategy is to continuously reinforce the fear and in some cases, escalate it.

How do they get all this data on you?

Easy, besides purchasing your data from ISPs, it’s mostly collected through Facebook and specifically Facebook apps.  We’ve all seen the various quiz posts our friends share in our newsfeed: “Which President/First Lady are you?” or “What color are you” or “What animal are you?” etc. Well, those are run in Apps, Apps that are gathering your personal information. Not from your answers to the quiz itself. Did you know by simply taking the quiz, you give the App Developer permission to access all your Facebook profile along with all your web activity inside and outside Facebook? This continues until you change settings or remove the app. Oh, and did I mention, this isn’t just YOUR information, it includes your friends’ information and activities as well.

(**SPECIAL NOTE: Remember, they don’t care about your answers on the quiz! So don’t take a quiz or questionnaire thinking you’ll screw up their data! They just want you to take it so you will give them permission to access your Facebook account.)

Here are a few actions you can take to limit access to your private Facebook information:

1) Don’t take any more quizzes, personality tests, etc… I know they’re fun, but they aren’t worth, literally, giving your soul away.

2) Don’t play games on Facebook. If you are addicted and just can’t help yourself, understand that you are inviting that gaming company in to see your inner most thoughts, feelings, fears and hopes. If that’s ok then game-on.

3) Besides apps that link to Facebook like Instagram, when another app or website asks you to sign in with your Facebook account, don’t do it, use the email option instead!  Unless, of course, its a company you don’t mind letting into your head then go for it!

4) Now, On your computer, go to ‘SETTINGS’, which can be found by clicking the icon in the upper righthand corner of the screen.

  • Once in Settings, there will be a list on the left side of your screen. Click  “Apps”. This will bring up a list of apps that are currently in your head, some for many years.
  • Click on the little pencil icon to the right of the name of one of the apps. This will allow you to see the information you’ve given them permission to access.  At this point, some people get shocked when they find an average of 30+ apps. Some find up to a couple hundred. I had over 50 when I first looked.  (Now,  DON’T DELETE the App just yet.)
  • Unfortunately they already have your information stored.  Part of an App developer’s agreement with Facebook is they are required to delete any/all information they have stored on you if you request them to. (Obviously there’s no way to know for sure if they do but it’s worth requesting) Facebook makes it fairly easy to do but it can be time consuming. So, if you don’t care about getting them to remove your past data, then just delete the app. If you want them to delete your existing data, then you need to make a request to each individual app to see the data and then have it removed.
  • In the meantime, go through and uncheck all of the boxes so they don’t have access to all of your information going forward. Repeat this for each App.

Check out FACEBOOK AD TARGETING, to see how incredibly detailed micro-targeted ads can get and Shh… you’re secrets were just sold to see how the GOP recently pulled your privacy rights out from under you.