Consumer Reports is delighted to announce the release of the report “Who Shares Your Information With Facebook”. The report sheds light on the state of the surveillance economy in 2023 and elucidates the practices of companies sharing consumers’ personal information with Facebook.
The report was produced in partnership with CR’s Community Reports team and is the result of a collective effort involving over 2000 volunteer consumers. Through their generous donations of their own Facebook data, CR was able to examine real-world surveillance of individuals.
The report covers more than 186,000 companies in the surveillance economy. On average, each participant in our study was identified by 2,230 different companies, mainly retailers, brands, service providers, data brokers, and political services firms. The donated data also reveals companies with unidentifiable names and the prevalence of practices like microtargeting. We conclude by offering recommendations to regulators and to Facebook to enable more agency, transparency, and protection for consumers.
You can read the full report here. You can also read coverage of the CR Surveillance Study in The Markup here.
Acknowledgements to Don Marti, Matthew Schwartz and Ginny Fahs for their help co-authoring the report, and to Alan Smith and Daniella Raposo for enabling and supporting this research.
