Nearly 2,230 different companies are sharing your data to Facebook

Research conducted on 709 participants found that approximately 186,000 different companies have shared user data to social media platform, Facebook. Of them, 682 participants had their event data being sent to Facebook, and 693 of them are included in the custom audience's data. 

On average, Facebook received data from 2,230 different companies for each of the 709 volunteers, while some were identified by more than 7,000 companies. An extreme example showed that nearly 48,000 different companies were found in the data of a single participant, according to the research. 

The research, conducted by Consumer Reports, also found that data broker LiveRamp shared data on the largest number of participants, amounting to 679 or 96% of study participants. 

Don't miss: Meta will (finally) encrypt all messages and calls on Messenger and Facebook 

Other companies in the top 10 include data brokers Acxiom, Experian Marketing Services - Audiences, Epsilon Audience Data Provider, digital marketing agencies Hearts & Science and OMD USA. Retailer The Home Depot and eCommerce platform Amazon.com also made it in the list of companies who shared data. 

Of the 100 companies that frequently appeared in the research, 39 are retailers, 28 are agencies or service provides, four are political services films, and 10 are best classified as other, according to the research report.

The companies listed in the Facebook data were identified in a number of ways - domain names, names of reasonably identifiable companies, names that are human-comprehensible but cannot be matched to a specific company and a string of unicode characters. 

In addition, 96,000 of the companies (52%) were targeting the 709 participants in the study. This could mean that even small companies with limited marketing resources can micro target users using Facebook's Meta Ad Manager. 

The prevalence of microtargeting raises concerns surrounding digital security. This is especially since a majority (7000) of the company names listed were unidentifiable and therefore, cannot be associated with a particular business. 

The research report comes after Google debunked common misconceptions about Privacy Sandbox, the company's application programming software. 

Since wiping out third-party cookies, Google is limiting website access to third-party cookies by default. Google has also begun testing, Tracking Protection, a new feature that limits cross-site tracking by restricting website access to third-party cookies by default.  

Initially, this trial will impact only 1% of Chrome users globally, allowing industry players time to test their readiness for a web without third-party cookies. This also marks a key milestone in Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome by the end of the year.  

Related articles:
Twitch unveils new Privacy Center to raise awareness of data privacy  Facebook and Instagram to get ad-free subscription plans in EuropeFacebook Marketplace and Carousell score the least for its anti-scam measures