How To Download All Your Facebook Data

Whether you lot're leaving Facebook for good or just curious about what data the social network has collected on y'all, you might want to download your Facebook information.

The option to download your Facebook data has existed since 2010, as Mark Zuckerberg made clear when he promised to prepare Facebook afterward the Senate hearings of April 2018.

So let's take a look at how to download your Facebook data, what's included, and, peradventure nearly importantly, what's not included.

How to Download Your Facebook Data and History

All Facebook users are able to request the data download via their Full general Account Settings. Y'all can do this via your reckoner browser, mobile browser, the Facebook app, and even on Facebook Lite.

Since the file you're downloading is quite large, nosotros'll cover the method most users will opt for—sending the request via your desktop browser.

How to Request Your Data on the Facebook Website

To download your Facebook information using the Facebook website on your desktop browser, follow these steps:

Log in to Facebook.com.
Click on the downward arrow in the elevation-right corner and click Settings & Privacy > Settings, or head to Facebook.com/settings.
Click Your Facebook Information.
Go to Download Your Information and click on View.
Select what data points to include by checking the advisable box under Deselect All, or maintain the default settings.
Then clickCreate File.
Wait until your information is set up to download. You will receive a notification when it'south done.
Click on the notification, review the file size, then clickDownload.
Enter your Facebook countersign to ostend your identity, then look for the download to consummate.

The fourth dimension it takes for Facebook to create a copy of your information will depend on just how much data you've selected to download.

When it does go far, your information volition be delivered in a Naught archive.

Customizing Your Facebook Data Download

Facebook allows yous to sort your downloads and to cull which information to download according to a variety of filters. These include:

Date range: Handy if you don't want to trawl through years of data to find something.
Format: Choose betweenHTML (default) andJSON. If in doubt, leave it on HTML.
Media quality: Higher volition mean a larger download size, though this is even so going to be worse than the quality of the original upload due to Facebook's aggressive compression.

You can also exclude certain items from the download. If you want a lean download and don't need your videos and photos, omit them by unchecking them, and watch your download size reduce significantly.

Exploring Your Downloaded Facebook Information

In one case you've downloaded your Zip file, excerpt it and you'll see a basic binder hierarchy that matches upward with the items you selected or deselected earlier. You're complimentary to trawl through these folders, simply it'south a lot easier to open up index.html or index in the root folder.

You tin can click on private sections to meet the information contained within them, in chronological club. You can click your name in the top-right corner if you desire to head dorsum to the index.

Other downloadable datasets include:

Ads Interests: Essentially topics that Facebook describes as "almost relevant to y'all". This is worth a look since many of the categories probablydon't apply to you.
Advertisers who've uploaded a contact list with your information: Facebook describes these as advertisers who "run ads using a contact list they've uploaded which includes contact info that you've shared with them or with one of their information partners".
Advertisers that you've interacted with: Only how advertising-savvy are you?
Messages: Including those you thought you lot'd deleted.
Friends: Including juicy categories similarRejected friend requests andRemoved friends you'd forgotten nigh.

What'south Not Included in Downloaded Facebook Data?

Facebook doesn't give away everything information technology knows about you, just the things you've explicitly shared. At that place are some limited advertising flags, like your broader interests and adverts you've interacted with; but these don't tell the whole story.

ProPublica identified over 52,000 unique "attributes" Facebook uses to classify its users. Almost of these metrics do not appear in the Advertizement Interests section of your Facebook download.

Instead, you'll need to find the listing titled "Involvement Categories" in the Advertizing Preferences section of your Facebook settings to see what Facebook thinks information technology knows virtually yous. This is inferred data—descriptors used to categorize you based on all manner of interactions with Facebook services.

Other categories may seem oddly empty, depending on which permissions you lot have enabled and whether you allow location tracking in the background, for example.

Facebook Data Locations and Calls History

The social network clearly knows more virtually you lot than it includes in the download, and users need to be aware of this. We don't know what data Facebook collects based on our browsing history—which profiles we visit and the groups we are most active in.

It'll be interesting to come across legislation evolve as the regime go along to probe into Facebook's treatment of user data.

Downloading Other Facebook Photos and Videos

So what if you want to download a video or photo that you've been tagged in? Facebook does not include these in your data download, since they're not technically yours. At that place are enough of legitimate reasons you might want to grab media from the site. Fair use laws protect your right to utilise this content in many jurisdictions.

We've covered plenty of ways to download Facebook photos and videos.

Downloading private Facebook videos is a lilliputian more than hard, since you'll demand to grab the page source code and paste it into a specific private video downloader. FBDown Private Video Downloader seems like the best bet in this case.

Is It Time to Delete Facebook?

It's off-white to say that Facebook has something of an epitome problem at the moment. However, despite massive data breaches and seemingly insidious advertising practices, more people are using the service than always earlier.

In that location are plenty of reasons to cease using Facebook right now, but at that place are besides reasons to non delete your Facebook. And so, the option is yours. However, regardless of whether you decide to dump Facebook, there'due south no reason not to at least download your data.

Image Credit: Christoph Scholz/Flickr

What Does Apple Know About Y'all? Asking Your Personal Data Now