In 2011, a 23-year-old student of data privacy law wondered how private his data was. Max Schrems of the University of Vienna asked Facebook for everything they had on him. Schrems sent two emails and got no response. A letter. No response. A phone call. No response. Then, as his lawyer, Wolfram Proksch of PFR in Austria, tells the story, Schrems received a mystery package in the mail with the data he had requested, perhaps from a secret privacy sympathizer at Facebook.
In Schrems’ two-and-a-half years of moderate Facebook use, the company had collected enough information on the Austrian law student to fill a 1,222-page printout with details on his religious, political, sexual, and above all commercial proclivities.
