Secret menu shows what Instagram and Facebook know about you

You probably know by now social networks rely on collecting large amounts of information on their users for advertisers.

But you probably weren’t aware you can access hidden menus that lay bare exactly what some apps know about you.

In the Instagram app, for example, you can see everything Meta – the company that owns Instagram, Facebook and the new character-limited app Threads – has on you. 

To access the menu where your personal information is hidden, you’ll need to go into Settings and Privacy in the app, then into Accounts Center, where you’ll see your profiles on both Facebook and Instagram.

Then go into Account Settings, then into Ad Preferences, then into Ad Topics, where you’ll see a short list of topics that you are interested in. Select View and Manage Topics, and you’ll see your full list.

You’ll need to access  a menu buried in the settings menu (Instagram)

There’s a very large list of intrests (Instagram) 

If you’ve used Facebook and Instagram for a while, this list will tend to be enormous – in our tests, the menu had around 500 interests, ranging from Guns N’ Roses to fruit and vegetable juice.

With each entry on your list, you can simply tap on it and say whether you want to see more or less ads like this.

There’s also a separate ‘Ad Settings’ menu where you can adjust settings about which categories are used to reach you (although you’ll need to put in your Facebook password to adjust some of these).

Instagram boasts that advertisers can ‘decide who matters most to your business, then reach them with adjustable targeting options.’

Meta’s $116.61 billion revenue in 2022 was driven by selling adverts on its social media platforms Facebook and Instagram.

Paul Bischoff, security and privacy advocate at Comparitech tells DailyMail.com, ‘Instagram and Threads, like most other social networks, collect data about you in three ways. 

‘First is the information you willingly provide, such as the info you use to sign up to the account, your profile details, and your posts. 

‘Then there’s data collected in the background as you use a service, such as your IP address and location, what posts and features you interact with, when and how long you use it, your language, and your device details. 

‘Lastly, social networks can obtain information from third parties, such as data brokers and public records, and tracking cookies. When you use Facebook or Instagram, they place a tracking cookie on your device. 

‘These cookies can be used to track which websites you visit and interact with. 

‘If you see a Facebook Like or Share button or a Facebook comments section on a third-party website, for example, those elements are likely tracking you on behalf of Facebook. 

‘They can see the advertising ID in the tracking cookie and log your visit with Facebook.’

He added: ‘Information from all of these sources is combined to create profiles about users. These profiles don’t contain directly identifying information like your name or contact information, but instead assign you a unique advertising ID. 

‘Even though the profile does not contain such identifying information, the info it does contain can be so specific as to only pertain to a single user. Third party advertisers can target all of the profiles for users in a certain location or are interested in a specific topic, for example.’