If you’ve always wondered why ads from websites you’ve visited follow you on Facebook, that’s because they have tools like Login with Facebook, like and comment, and pixels. But you don’t really have something that would let you view and track all of that data that Facebook has been sharing with external websites. Well, now, finally you do. The social media giant has announced a new tool called Off-Facebook Activity so you can track and control all that data.
Basically, this new Facebook feature will let you view all of that data that apps and external websites send Facebook. More importantly, it lets you delete all that information in case you don’t want your data following you around. This is the first time that you get to see all of that and have control over what these websites get to send Facebook and then make them stop hitting you with all those targeted ads that you get on your account.
Aside from getting to see a summary of all that information that apps and websites have sent to Facebook, you get to choose to disconnect all of your future off-Facebook activity. You can also just choose the specific apps and websites that you want to disconnect from. They admit that this will have some effect on the businesses that use these targeted advertising from Facebook to earn but they say “giving people control over their data is more important.”
Facebook also shares that since this is a new thing and they didn’t have any template to follow, their engineers redesigned their system so they could have a whole new way to process this information. They also did research, reviewed customer feedback, and consulted privacy experts before eventually creating this tool and rolling it out to users. While it doesn’t make up for all the privacy issues that users have been complaining about, it’s a step in the right direction.
The Off-Facebook Activity feature is gradually rolling out to users in Ireland, South Korea, and Spain. It will be available in other countries and territories over the next few months.
