O Facebook has announced a new privacy tool that allows, since Tuesday, to view and control the information that some applications and websites share with the technology giant to improve targeted ads.
In fact, the user will have the power to decide whether companies or third parties may have access to their personal data and browsing records within the platform. The move, promised by the company since May 2018, is a response to the scandal. Cambridge Analytica in the last US presidential election.
Users will have to proactively look for the new feature in their settings, where they will see a list of companies and sites that have shared data with Facebook. Users then have two main options:
- Clear all browsing data from your account, which means it will no longer be used for ad targeting;
- Tell Facebook to stop linking this data to your account in the future. Users can do this holistically, meaning that no browsing data will be linked from any application or site, or prevent data pairing for specific applications and sites.
"To activate the feature you will need to go to the settings menu and find a tab called 'Activity Outside Facebook'. There are several steps and it involves reading a lot of things to get to this tool. It is possible that many people end up not activating it because it requires a lot of work."
The feature, which Facebook said took longer than expected due to technical obstacles, has limitations. Those who use Facebook's login feature to sign in to external applications, for example, cannot separate data collected from that application from their profiles.
