otherwise terrible for marketers and publishers whose businesses
rely on Facebook advertisement for re-targeted conversations.
Following the Cambridge Analytica
scandal[1], Facebook has taken
several privacy measures in the past one year with an aim to give
its users more control over their data and transparency about how
the social media giant and other apps on its platform use that
data.
Now in its new effort, Facebook has launched a new privacy
feature that allows its users to control data that the social media
platform receives from other apps and websites about their online
activity.
Dubbed “Off-Facebook Activity,” the feature was initially
announced by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last year as “Clear
History,” allowing users to clear the data that third-party
websites and apps share with Facebook.
“Off-Facebook Activity lets you see a summary of the apps and
websites that send us information about your activity, and clear
this information from your account if you want to,” Facebook says
in a post[2] published today.
“We expect this could have some impact on our business, but we
believe giving people control over their data is more important.”
What Are Off-Facebook Activities?
For those unaware, Facebook collects its users information in two
ways—first, through the information you fill into its site and
apps, and second, by tracking your browsing history via Login with
Facebook, Like button, Facebook comments, and invisible code called
Facebook Pixel embedded on other sites—to know which websites you
visit when you’re not on Facebook.
It’s probably happened to you—when you scroll through your Facebook
feed, the social media site displays advertisements from some
specific brands whose websites you have recently visited.
That’s because most publishers take Facebook’s help, using tools
like Facebook Pixel or Facebook Login, to identify their website
visitors and then use the Facebook advertising platform to show
targeted advertisements to them.
How to Use Off-Facebook Activity Tool?
summary of the data other apps and websites have sent Facebook
through its business tools as well as disconnect this information
or all future off-Facebook activity altogether from your account.
To use this tool, go to your Facebook account’s settings and
click on Off-Facebook Activity. Once open, you will see the apps
and websites that are tracking your activity and sending reports to
Facebook for ad targeting.
You can tap the “Clear History” button to clear your browsing
history and disconnect your Facebook account from selected apps and
websites or all of them in the future.
“We won’t know which websites you visited or what you did there,
and we won’t use any of the data you disconnect to target ads to
you on Facebook, Instagram or Messenger,” Facebook said.
Facebook Doesn’t Delete Your Data; Instead, Just
Disconnects!
However, it’s important to note that the feature doesn’t actually
allow users to delete their browsing information; instead, it
simply lets users dissociate collected data from their Facebook
account.
In the background on its Database structure, Facebook now
assigns a unique SID to each online activity that an app or website
shares with it and then associates those SIDs with your profile
referring as a unique UID.
the feature basically dissociates your off-site activity by simply
removing the mapping between the UIDs and SIDs instead of deleting
all rows and columns in its database.
“In most cases, when a person uses Off-Facebook Activity to
disconnect that information, we remove this mapping between the UID
and SID within 48 hours, which breaks the process of joining
individual rows in data warehouse tables with a user account,”
Facebook’s engineering
team[3] said in a separate blog
post.
“If a person chooses to have off-site activity disconnected going
forward, we automatically disconnect it and rotate SIDs on a daily
basis. We took a similar approach to other information that carries
a risk of user identification, like browser or device identifiers,
and converted those to alternative SIDs as well.”
collected on you but will anonymize that data rather than pair it
with your profile.
Starting today, the social media giant has begun rolling out the
Off-Facebook Activity feature for Facebook users in Ireland, Spain,
and South Korea, which would be followed by a worldwide launch
“over the coming months.”
References
- ^
Cambridge Analytica scandal
(thehackernews.com) - ^
post
(newsroom.fb.com) - ^
engineering team
(engineering.fb.com)
Read more http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheHackersNews/~3/OavhoJj106A/clear-off-facebook-activity.html