Did Facebook read my private emails? | Letters
The news reminds me why I stopped using Facebook (Report, 22 March). Back in 2015-16 my mother was dying and I only used my BT email when writing to family and friends about her, never mentioning her on Facebook, the only social media I used. Suddenly I started getting pop-up adverts on Facebook for funeral organisers, will writers and monumental masons. At a time of great emotional pain, I was confronted by this every time I went on to Facebook like a slap in the face. I complained to BT that it seemed my emails were being compromised, when I thought what I wrote in them was private. They said it should be and they would investigate but I heard no more.
I tried to contact Facebook to complain about inappropriate advertising which, to me, was of an emotionally abusive nature, but could find no working contact details. It left me no alternative but to come off Facebook because I could no longer trust the site. My main worry was the link between what I wrote in emails and what appeared on Facebook. I tested it by sending an email saying I was thinking of going to Italy. Hey presto, up came an advert on Facebook for Alitalia. It felt like an invasion of my privacy even if it's only computers talking to each other with no humans aware. To use my mother's final illness as a means to persuade me to buy things is inappropriate and caused me immense distress.
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