# SPRING FAQ

## What is SPRING?

SPRING is your Facebook escape hatch. It gives you direct control of your Facebook data by allowing you to:

* Retrieve and store your data securely,
* Browse and search all your data,
* Learn about how you use Facebook,
* Gain private insights about what Facebook knows about you,
* Understand how Facebook is able to monetize you through its partners, and
* Control access to your data via your personal API.

SPRING is currently available on iPhone and Android devices.

## Do I need to terminate my Facebook account to use SPRING?

No, absolutely not. You can still continue to use Facebook normally while also using SPRING.

## Why did Bitmark make SPRING?

Bitmark believes that the Internet is under attack. When companies like Facebook inserted themselves in the middle of our communications, they undermined our ability to trust information. At the heart of this problem is personal data.

From fake news to deepfakes, we are rapidly moving towards a society that can no longer trust information. Personal data is the fuel Facebook uses to match and maximize advertising revenue. Personal data is what allows advertisers to manipulate our information using our deepest fears, insecurities, and desires against us.

Bitmark is the creator of the [Bitmark Protocol](https://bitmark.com/products/bitmark-protocol/faq), an end-to-end Internet protocol for securing data provenance and restoring trust in data. We see SPRING as the first step in a movement to restore trust in data and help fix the Internet. We believe that our personal data can be used for so much more than selling us out to advertisers. Personal data can enrich and improve our lives in profound ways. SPRING is Bitmark’s first tool to help us all realize this vision.

## Will SPRING get ALL my Facebook data?

SPRING retrieves your Facebook information archive, which contains everything that you’ve ever contributed to Facebook, including all of your friends, posts, photos, stories, reactions, comments, and messages. SPRING also backs up other bits of information, including your profile information. For a full list of the kinds of data provided by Facebook in your information archive, please see [this post from Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/help/930396167085762)._ _

However, Facebook is selective about what they consider to be your data. For example, the following personal data is not included in your information archive:

* Information collected about your browsing history
* Information they collect about the apps you visit and your activity within those apps
* Information shared with other Facebook-owned platforms, such as Instagram and WhatsApp
* Websites you visited and were tracked by “Like” buttons
* Information you shared via share buttons on external websites.
* Advertisers who uploaded your contact information to Facebook more than two months prior
* Ads that you interacted with more than two months prior

SPRING will continue to find new methods of helping you get more of your data from Facebook.

## What other insights does SPRING provide?

In addition to backing up your information archive, SPRING provides other data that can help you understand how Facebook matches your digital profile for advertising. All of these insights are totally private for you (and no one else) to see.

SPRING currently provides insights into:

* How you use Facebook
* The amount of revenue Facebook made from you
* The sentiment analysis of your posts
* Ad interests tracked by Facebook
* Advertisers that collected data about you
* Locations tracked by Facebook

We plan to add more insights over time, based on what you would like to see.

## How does SPRING protect my Facebook data?

SPRING protects your Facebook data backup so that only you can access your information. When you first use the SPRING app, a unique key is generated that only you know and is only ever held in your mobile device’s secure keychain. SPRING stores your Facebook data in encrypted cloud storage on AWS (Amazon Web Services). All your data is encrypted using your unique key so that only you can access it. There is no login or password stored on a central server. Your unique key is the only way to access your data. This means that not even Bitmark can read your data.

This compartmentalized approach to security ensures that your data is never vulnerable to attacks on a central data server, as has often occurred with Facebook and many other centralized data controllers. In other words, if a malicious hacker is somehow able to obtain one SPRING user’s unique key, it doesn’t compromise the security of the system as a whole. Only that user’s data is at risk. No other SPRING users will be affected because every user’s data is secured with a different unique key.

This security architecture also means that no one — not Bitmark or any other parties — can ever sell your personal data to others. You alone control access to your data.

## Will SPRING regularly back up my data if I continue to use Facebook?

Currently, we only back up your data one time when you first start using SPRING. In the future, we may [add features](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s3UbqVvgCcf4ujCRNbH6aprGz1Lw6ye2cyJWgSZ30JY/edit#), such as automatically recurring backups.

## Does SPRING keep a copy of my Facebook login information?

When you use SPRING for the first time, the app will ask you to log in to Facebook so that we can request your information archive and download it to your secure server. Your login information is only ever entered directly into Facebook’s login screen and is never captured or stored anywhere in the SPRING app or servers. Once you have authorized your information archive download, we capture that authorization session data so that we can download your archive and secure it with your unique key (see “How does SPRING protect my Facebook data?”).

For further information, please review our [Privacy Policy](https://hackmd.io/rwSjZRSkROGopLf-QMnDKQ) and [EULA](https://hackmd.io/pqgWFV0aSTuoi7o4Q1FXyQ) and ask us questions if anything is unclear.

## Can I share my SPRING data?

Not right now. But in the future, we'll show you how you can get more value out of your data by giving you tools to work with it and combine it with other kinds of personal data. We think this will be useful, not only to help you learn about your own behaviors, but also to fuel new products and research — all without you ever losing control.

Our plan is to allow you to use your data to participate in other projects without actually sharing a copy of your data. Instead, SPRING will provide you with your own API (application programming interface), which will give you the power to allow other apps and services to run computations on your data without ever granting them direct access to your data. It’s the technological equivalent of bringing a historian to the archives, rather than handing a copy of the archives to the historian.

In this sense, SPRING is like a bootloader that will gradually lead to alternative social networks and other exciting services where people are always in control of their data. That’s the future we want.

## How does SPRING make money?

Right now, SPRING doesn’t make money. SPRING is currently in alpha release and will be entirely free until a production release of SPRING is ready. After that point, we plan to support future development of SPRING by charging a recurring subscription fee. We don’t know how much this fee will be, but our goal is to make it affordable to as many people as possible because we want to empower everyone to take back control of their Facebook data. We all have the right to directly control and benefit from our personal data. With SPRING, you will always be a customer and never the product.

## How do I stop using SPRING?

You are free to export all your data and delete your account at any time within the SPRING app. Neither SPRING nor Bitmark will ever keep any additional copies of your data in any form, so once you delete it, it is gone forever.

## How can I give feedback?

We love to hear from you:

* Join our Discord chat group: [https://discord.gg/mxy7QbM](https://discord.gg/mxy7QbM)
* Email us at: [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])