This article was copublished with Consumer Reports, an independent, nonprofit organization that works side by side with consumers for truth, transparency and fairness in the marketplace. Learn more here.
By now most internet users know their online activity is constantly tracked. No one should be shocked to see ads for items they previously searched for, or to be asked if their data can be shared with an unknown number of “partners.”
But what is the scale of this surveillance? Judging from data collected by Facebook and newly described in a unique study by non-profit consumer watchdog Consumer Reports, it’s massive, and examining the data may leave you with more questions than answers.
Using a panel of 709 volunteers who shared archives of their Facebook data, Consumer Reports found that a total of 186,892 companies sent data about them to the social network. On average, each participant in the study had their data sent to Facebook by 2,230 companies. That number varied significantly, with some panelists’ data listing over 7,000 companies providing their data.
2,230 different companies, on average, shared data on each participant.
The Markup helped Consumer Reports recruit participants for the study. Participants downloaded an archive of the last three years of their data from their Facebook settings, then provided it to Consumer Reports.
By collecting data this way, the study was able to examine a form of tracking that is normally hidden: so-called “server-to-server” tracking, in which personal data goes from a company’s servers to Meta’s servers. Another form of tracking, in which Meta tracking pixels are placed on company websites, is visible to users’ browsers.
Because the data came from a self-selected group of users, and because the results were not demographically adjusted, the study does not “make any claims about how representative this sample is of the U.S. population as a whole,” Consumer Reports noted. Participants were also likely more privacy conscious and technically inclined than typical users and more likely to be members of Consumers Reports.
Despite its limitations, the study offers a rare look, using data directly from Meta, on how personal information is collected and aggregated online.
96%of study participants’ data was shared by LiveRamp, a data broker.
Meta spokesperson Emil Vazquez defended the company’s practices. “We offer a number of transparency tools to help people understand the information that businesses choose to share with us, and manage how it’s used,” wrote Vazquez in an emailed statement to The Markup.
While Meta does provide transparency tools like the one that enabled the study, Consumer Reports identified problems with them, including that the identity of many data providers is unclear from the names disclosed to users and that companies that provide services to advertisers are often allowed to ignore opt-out requests.
One company appeared in 96% of participants’ data: the San Francisco-based data broker LiveRamp. But the companies sharing your online activity to Facebook aren’t just little-known data brokers. Retailers like Home Depot, Walmart and Macy’s all were in the top 100 most frequently-seen companies in the study. Credit reporting and consumer data companies such as Experian and TransUnion’s Neustar also made the list, as did Amazon, Etsy and PayPal.
LiveRamp did not respond to a request for comment.
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