Facebook, under pressure to level up privacy rules across its platform, said on Tuesday (August 20) it was rolling out a tool allowing users to control data that it receives on other applications and websites about their online activity.
The new tool to allow the clients to access their so-called “Off-Facebook activity”- fed back to Facebook aiming to target advertisements and to give them the option of deleting it. It has been launched in South Korea, Ireland and Spain, as per Facebook’s tendency to launch new features in smaller markets initially. It would roll out elsewhere over the coming months, Facebook said.
“Off-Facebook Activity lets you see a summary of the apps and websites that send us information about your activity through Facebook Pixel or Facebook login, and clear this information from your account if you want to,” it said in a statement.
Currently, commercial websites visited by customers who also have a Facebook account may send Facebook details of that visit, prompting the social network to show that person ads related to any product they may have searched for. Meaning, you could get fewer ads on Facebook. This new tool launched by Facebook will let the users limit what the social network can gather about them on other websites and apps. They will have the option to disconnect the information from their individual accounts.
Jasmine Enberg, social media analyst at research firm eMarketer, said the tool is part of Facebook’s efforts to be clearer to users on how it tracks them and likely “an effort to stay one step ahead of regulators, in the U.S and abroad.”
The users can access this tool by going to their Facebook settings and scrolling down to “your Facebook information.” The “Off-Facebook activity” option will be there when it launches. It will let the users delete their browsing history and prevent it from tracking their future clicks, tabs and website visits. This would ensure that Facebook won’t use that information from the browsed apps and websites to target advertisements to its users on the social platform.
The previous month, US regulators slapped Facebook with a record USD 5-billion penalty for data protection violations in a wide-ranging settlement that calls for ramping of privacy controls and oversight at the social network platform.
“We’ve agreed to pay a historic fine, but even more important, we’re going to make some major structural changes to how we build products and run this company,” Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the time, adding that “we’re going to set a completely new standard for our industry,” he added.
Stephanie Max, product manager at Facebook, said the company believes the tool could affect revenue, though she did not reveal how much. But she said giving people “transparency and control” is important.
