Facebook has a file on you: Even if you don’t have an account, if you’re online, they track you through third-party activity

It seems as though the more we find out about Facebook and how the company operates behind closed doors, the more America resembles the fictional world created by George Orwell in his famous book 1984. In addition to seeking out conservative users and censoring their content, Facebook also collects personal information from everyone on the Internet, regardless of whether or not they have a Facebook account.

As Business Insider reported back in May of 2016, “For the first time, Facebook will use information about people who don’t have accounts on the social network to show them ads on other websites through its Audience Network.” Prior to this, the social media site only showed ads to people who had accounts based solely on information they collected from their Facebook activity. However, for the past two years, Facebook has been collecting data on everyone on the Internet using cookies, plugins and other pieces of code in order to show more ads, and, in turn, generate more profit.

If you were able to gain the courage to check, chances are you would be absolutely shocked at how much information Facebook already has on you. In a recent article published on NZHerald.co.nz, author Nick Whigham went into detail on the things he discovered after downloading a data cache containing all of the information that Facebook had on file about him and his personal life.