You can't stop Facebook from gathering information about any entity you encounter in the world, full stop. That, however, is about the full extent of the control you have. But the last of the lot is an online retailer I have not made a purchase from since before 2009 at the latest-under a different name and email address, and using a boss's corporate card. My list also features one retailer I frequently buy from, which I would also expect. As far as I can tell, 14 of them are data brokers, such as Acxiom and Experian, which I would expect. For example, businesses "who have uploaded and shared a list with information" includes 16 firms. The full Ads and Businesses menu is revealing, particularly "Advertisers who uploaded a contact list with your information." What you find may surprise you. If you're interested in finding out all the data Facebook's getting, it's worth picking " Access Your Information" and then scrolling all the way down until you see the settings for "Ads and Businesses," which lets you manage Off-Facebook Activity as well as several other settings. They may just be less tailored to you personally. "It may be used for measurement purposes and to make improvements to our ads systems, but it will be disconnected from your account," the warning dialog says. Both are found under the Facebook settings menu:
If you're logged in, you can click this link to go straight to the relevant setting.
Facebook has a guide you can customize for desktop, mobile browser, or mobile app instructions. You can access your Off-Facebook Activity, along with other information, several ways. A massive number of businesses, devices, and data services send data through Facebook, which aggregates them into something of a digital you.
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Facebook explicitly acquired the Atlas advertising platform in 2013, then relaunched it in 2014, to better tie together all of your browsing, purchase, and other online and offline histories into a single unified profile.
Variations on this process have been happening for years. Jane sees an ad on Facebook for a 10% off coupon on her next shoe or clothing purchase from the online store.The activity is saved as "visited the Clothes and Shoes website" and "made a purchase." We receive Jane's Off-Facebook Activity and we save it with her Facebook account.The store shares Jane's activity with us using our business tools.Jane buys a pair of shoes from an online clothing and shoe store.Here's how Facebook itself describes the process: Facebook attaches that data to the rest of the information it has about you and uses it for marketing purposes. Off-Facebook Activity is exactly what it sounds like: interactions you have with other entities, such as an app on your phone or a retailer you shop at, that Facebook receives data about. Its promises to give you a measure of control over the process, however, fall short.įacebook this week launched an Off-Facebook Activity portal to give users a different and more detailed perspective on the data it hoovers up from other firms. Facebook's new tool is indeed illuminating when it comes to getting a glimpse at who tracks you (spoiler: everyone). This wealth of personal data could help users understand how and why Facebook and other large data firms target them.After years of promising increased transparency, Facebook is getting granular and showing you how it picks up and mashes together data about you from other companies.
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Users can then download and browse the information collected on them. With the new tool, Facebook's nearly 2 billion users can access a list of websites and apps that have shared their information with the site. Now you can see a summary of that information and clear it from your account if you want to." "Other businesses send us information about your activity on their sites and we use that information to show you ads that are relevant to you. "As of today, our Off-Facebook Activity tool is available to people on Facebook around the world," Zuckerberg wrote in the post. The "Off-Facebook Activity" tool was announced in a company blog post written by Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as a way to give users "more control" over their privacy. Facebook unveiled a new tool on Tuesday that lets users see how much - and what - data about them other apps are sharing with the social media behemoth.