Facebook Lets Users Prevent Targeted Advertising With New Tool

Facebook announced it has launched a new privacy tool so users can prevent their information from being sent to the site for targeted advertising.

The new tool, called Off-Facebook Activity, will allow users to see a summary of the apps and websites that send Facebook information about their activity, and clear this information from the account.

“This is another way to give people more transparency and control on Facebook, along with recent updates to our Ad Library, updates to ‘Why am I seeing this ad?’ and the launch of a new feature called ‘Why am I seeing this post?’” the company wrote in a press release.

However, the company noted it will not be deleting that data from its servers completely, even if users opt out. In fact, the company will continue to collect data to provide third parties with analytics, but the information won’t be linked to a specific account.

“If you clear your off-Facebook activity, we’ll remove your identifying information from the data that apps and websites choose to send us,” the company explained. “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. We expect this could have some impact on our business, but we believe giving people control over their data is more important.”

This is the latest tool that Facebook has introduced in an effort to win back users’ trust after the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

“After a few headline-grabbing data privacy issues, Facebook has had to make aggressive moves to win back consumer trust,” said Jim Cridlin, global head of innovation at media agency Mindshare, according to the Financial Times.

He added that even with this latest tool, the company would still “maintain rich targeting capabilities from the data they gather from within their ecosystem.”