Data Obfuscation with Tamper Monkey, Facebook and Data Selfie

Krizia FernandoMarch 19, 2018March 20, 2018Quantified Self

Using Tamper Monkey, a chrome extension tool that runs user scripts to override javascript code on the browser, I planned on automating Facebook likes on the first post on my feed.

I sought the web and found existing user scripts that does this but tampermonkey was running a bit glitch-y. I resolved to use manual workaround to ensure the autoliking by refreshing the page. Using the Facebook Autolike code, the like button is automated 10 times until I refresh the page:

Manual Scrolling/Autolike only the topmost post on my news feed

Activity Log

Data Selfie, as recommended by Aurelia, is a good basic working dashboard of how Facebook retrieves information about me. I used it to track the change or progress of Facebook is surveilling my activities.

Data Selfie Before and After

I tracked my Data Selfie dashboard on March 14 and compared the results with activities on March 19.

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NowThis has gained 1000 seconds of my attention, and naturally topped my Top Liked Posts list.

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Published by Krizia Fernando

Krizia is a civic techie and product designer in the field of healthcare. She's the founder of femmecubator, a platform for women of color in tech. She hopes to build a product in social innovation tech before the next pandemic. View all posts by Krizia Fernando

2 Comments

Joey says:

March 24, 2018 at 4:46 pm

Thanks for your obfuscation proposition. Nice work setting up your baseline understanding through the use of data selfie and tracking how your hack might begin to change what facebook thinks about you.

How might having a chrome extension that adds other reactions as well add to the complexity of your obfuscated profile? If you like and unlike something at the same time does it neutralize the effect? What about the other reactions? What might start to happen if people in your social network see you liking more controversial posts? Potentially more offensive ones? What starts to happen when your obfuscation attempts start to implicate other aspects of your life (e.g. job prospects, others?) ?

Thanks for the effort! Looking forward to seeing your thoughts and explorations develop here.

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Aurelia Moser says:

April 1, 2018 at 10:48 am

Whoa, really cool that you’re using Data Selfie! I’m so late to giving you feedback here, but the implications Joey called out above are really fascinating; it will be interesting to see how far folks go in the class to obfuscate their social profiles/tracking.

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