I’m guessing the answer is “no”, but thought I’d ask for advice here regardless.
I don’t have FB. Haven’t for years. I ditched it long before I started giving a shit about Privacy, it’s just so toxic and silly.
That said, I’m a retro gamer constantly on the hunt for holes in my NES/SNES collection and unfortunately the folks in my area seem to be quite a bit more active on FB Marketplace than Craiglist, Offerup, or Nextdoor For Sale pages. In the past I’ve asked my spouse to message the seller for me and then show up with cash and buy what they’re selling. Increasingly, sellers are scared of scams and seem to be less responsive to this type of inquiry.
Is there anyway to minimize footprint in FB? Or perhaps a way to use Messenger without an account? You can browse the marketplace pages of your community without an account, but they’ll pester you the whole time and you can’t save your locale without signing in.
Or am I out of luck entirely? I thought about posting “In Search Of” type posts on Craiglists to bring the buyers to me, but my area has several of those already and I’m not after bulk lots or other platforms other than the old Nintendo stuff.
I do check Ebay as well and have found a few gems for decent prices and a local shop occasionally has some stuff that hasn’t been completely picked over, or i show up right after someone sells their collection and that’s rad, but that’s rare.
First, it’s important to realize that Meta is likely tracking you already through its ad-related services even if you don’t have an actual FB account. Countless retailers and services are using Meta and Google for ads and analytics and it’s virtually impossible to be completely off their radar if you do any online shopping, banking, or service consumption.
Even with the use of VPNs, uBlock and other tools, Meta likely already has your particulars, including full name, phone number, email, and physical address simply by way of family members and colleagues saving that information to their own address books which are then shared to Meta through FB, WhatsApp, etc. In this way, your name, phone number and/or email address has likely already been associated to otherwise anonymized data through retailer back-ends.
That said, if Marketplace is important to you I would simply create a FB account and use it solely for that. I would avoid installing any FB/messenger apps, and opt for a browser-only experience in order to minimize additional privacy infringement. Use FF containers, incognito mode, or a separate browser altogether for FB access if you feel it’s necessary.
Meta has taken a hardline approach to fake/obfuscated accounts, so I suggest using legitimate tombstone info but only provide what’s necessary for account generation. Anything less and you’ll risk a deactivated account, or Marketplace ban.
Don’t overthink it. If you use the platform with basic care (no apps, no persistent cookies), then the most they’re going to glean is that you like shopping for retro games and other used goods.
Excellent points. I haven’t tried it yet, but the app Hermit has sandboxing as well and creates PWA-type apps out of websites. I’ve been using it for self hosted services that don’t have and Android app component to them. Works reasonably well but I’m not trying to hide info…from myself :)
