Facebook Privacy Analyzer

A project of P2P Group (TU Darmstadt)

Do you sometimes wonder how long you actually are on Facebook? Which pages you are surfing on and how many entries in your newsfeed you are looking at? How many posts you comment on and like and how many messages you send?

Facebook Privacy Analyzer how long you really are surfing on Facebook. The extension analyzes your behavior and generates statistics from these data. For privacy reasons, the data are collected completely anonymously. You can find more information on that below.

Download the free extension for Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox:

Die Studie ist beendet, vielen Dank an alle Teilnehmer!

Information

Hello, my name is Daniel Puscher. I am the developer of the browser extension Facebook Privacy Watcher. The idea for this extension was examined and verified about 3 years ago in my bachelor thesis.

In my master thesis, I am working on user behavior in online social networks again. I want to analyze the behavior of users on Facebook as precisely as possible, to gain insights for future projects and alternative platforms.

This research is performed under the direction of Prof. Thorsten Strufe and Thomas Paul, who also supported my work on "Facebook Privacy Watcher". (Information about this project on the website of TU Darmstadt)

To ensure the analysis is representative, I need data from as many Facebook users as possible. If you install Facebook Privacy Analyzer, you not only get statistics about your Facebook-use but also help me with my studies. The extension collects data automatically when you are using Facebook. This data is completely anonymous and does not allow us to identity any user or Facebook profile.

Before the data is sent, it can be viewed completely. Thereby I guarantee the greatest possible transparency in collection of the data.

Screenshots

Explanation of collected data

Here you can find some sample data of a Facebook session with explanations of the data collected. Note that in long sessions, significantly more entries may be created. If you have any questions, you can you contact me by e-mail.

For each action the following information is stored:

  • IDA counter that automatically numbered your entries
  • actionName of the action, you performed
  • metaMeta-information about the action (see below for examples)
  • tabIdID of the tab, in which the action was performed.
  • timestampTimestamp
  • userUser who performed the action (anonymized)

Example-Data

Here you can find some sample data, that could be generated during a session. In addition to data sent from the browser while performing actions, there is also read meta data directly from the source code of the webpage.

Hover your mouse over the meta-data for an explanation.

ID action meta tabId timestamp user
1 visitPage 
{
    "siteType": "loggedOut"
}
 15 21.11.2013 17:51:20 unknown
2 login 
{}
 15 21.11.2013 17:51:31 unknown
3 visitPage 
{
    "siteType": "newsFeed"
}
 15 21.11.2013 17:51:34 b5448e628c766c3dab9c3...
4 like 
{
    "like_action": "true",
    "ft_ent_identifier": "10151878355403228",
    "source": "1",
    "client_id": "1385134194540:721623998",
    "rootid": "u_0_2i",
    "ft.qid": "5949106029462636000",
    "ft.mf_story_key": "6750833749779685000",
    "ft.fbfeed_location": "1",
    "path": "/ajax/ufi/like.php"
}
 15 21.11.2013 17:51:44 b5448e628c766c3dab9c3...
5 viewNewsfeedEntry 
{
    "id": "6750833749779685266",
    "duration": "8297",
    "meta": {
        "id": "6750833749779685266",
        "fbid": "10151878976693229",
        "typeId": "22",
        "sourceApp": "0",
        "source": "13",
        "time": "1385130199",
        "position": "1",
        "autorType": "page",
        "numberTagged": "0",
        "translationOffered": "false",
        "likes": "43",
        "comments": "3",
        "reshares": "1",
        "type": "post",
        "hasLink": "false"
    }
}
 15 21.11.2013 17:52:10 b5448e628c766c3dab9c3...
6 siteVisit 
{
    "id": "7207f0c4182187163d85070b6d473f25e2362781",
    "siteType": "messages"
}
 15 21.11.2013 17:52:52 b5448e628c766c3dab9c3...
7 closeFacebookTab 
{
    "remainingTabs": "0"
}
 15 21.11.2013 17:53:18 b5448e628c766c3dab9c3...

Contact

Developer

Daniel Puscher

www.daniel-puscher.de

Contact for press

Thomas Paul

http://www.p2p.tu-darmstadt.de/people/thomas-paul/

Prof. Thorsten Strufe

http://www.p2p.tu-darmstadt.de/people/thorsten-strufe/



Maybe you need to allow Firefox to install this extension.