How to get all the data Facebook holds on you
Plenty of people wonder how much information Facebook holds about you - but fewer know that, if you live in the European Union, you have a legal right to obtain it.
Unsurprisingly, it's not something Facebook is keen to tell you about, either - which is why the form required to do so is buried away on the social networking site. Campaign group Europe vs Facebook plans to change all that, prompting EU citizens to request a copy of all private data that's held about them.
Under European data protection law, individuals have a legal right - the "right to access" - to receive a copy of all personal data that a company holds on them. And Facebook Ireland Limited, Facebook's European holding company, has a legal duty to supply every this information to European Facebook user - and, indeed, non-user - who requests it. Europe vs Facebook warns that a bit of persistence is required. It claims requests by letter are simply ignored, and that email requests are often initially met with replies explaining how to log into the site, or simply ignored. If you continue to experience such problems, the advice is to write to the Irish Data Protection Commissioner here.
