Facebook made a gesture toward transparency this week with the launch of its Off-Facebook Activity tool. This offers users a glimpse into the many ways details of real-world transactions get shared with Facebook, regardless of what you’re doing on the Facebook platform. The tool lets you monitor and (sort of) delete some of the information it collects about this activity. It also serves as a reminder of the frightening amount of information Facebook knows about you.
This isn’t a surprising revelation; it’s not a revelation at all. Facebook is a free service that allows you to do fun stuff like set up a profile and send messages to friends, and it uses a variety of tools to track your every move both online and off. The social network then uses everything it knows about you (read: more than you’d like) to sell hyper-targeted ads.
This business model has been around for decades, and it shows how free software (not to be confused with the free software movement) and services are never really free. You’re paying with your data. This week’s Facebook news as well as a number of recent reports about data collection also help us better understand the so-called alternative data industry. There’s a good chance that the free app or software you love is funded by the proceeds of your data. All this business, as you might have already guessed, isn’t always great for your online privacy.
Alternative data refers to data collected from non-traditional sources including web browsing activity and social media posts. The industry revolves around companies exchanging the titbits of information collected — much of which can be collected through free software and services, including anything from anti virus software to social media.
So "free" is often the honeypot attracting you (and millions of others) to a service that recoups its costs (although Facebook does a lot more than recoup) from using your data. Yes there are open source services but someone has to pay for the hosting so often they will ask for donations which keeps them going.
Read more about alternative data and why it can be dangerous at Why your free software is never free
If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.