Facebook is never a good friend with privacy, but still, it's always trying to be one.
The social media giant is known to track users in many ways possible, even beyond its platform. And this time, the platform introduces more privacy tool to help users personally manage how much of their browsing habits Facebook is allowed to know.
This is where the company introduces 'Off-Facebook Activity', as a way for users to get more control of their data.
According to Facebook on its post:
"Control is important to you, especially when it comes to your data. Which is why you're seeing changes in how you view and manage your information on Facebook."
Today, we're starting to roll out Off-Facebook Activity, a new feature that gives you more control over your datahttps://t.co/GXpWUKeAyL
— Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) August 20, 2019
When browsing the web for something, Facebook users may soon see that ads shown on Facebook are somehow related to what they've previously browsed.
It's perfectly possible for Facebook to track non-users and logged-out users when they're browsing the web. Considering that many websites embed Facebook Pixel, use Facebook social plugins and so forth, all of those sites visitors' activities are tracked and profiled to their corresponding Facebook account.
The social network can then use all that information to target users with personalized ads - a business model that worth billions of dollars for the company.
Facebook has done this since 2015, at the very least.
'Off-Facebook Activity' here, which is initially launched to users in Ireland, Spain, and South Korea, aims to give that control back to the users.
It's essentially a page where users can see where Facebook is getting all their data from, and allegedly, put an end to it if they choose to.
Read: When Things Are Free On The Internet, They Aren't "Free". Your Data Is Expensive
According to Facebook, the 'Off-Facebook Activity' shows users a list of the apps and sites that send Facebook their data.
Using this tool, users can either clear their entire activity history, or turn off future data collection altogether, either from everyone or from specific sites.
This is essentially the feature founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised in 2018. At that time, the social media was experiencing huge scrutiny over its over data collection which led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
While this tool can be a dream come true to those Facebook users who are very concerned of their privacy, unfortunately, it doesn't really delete all information, even if users cleared their activity or disconnect it from their account.
According to Erin Egan, Chief Privacy Officer and David Baser, Director of Product Management, in the announcement:
In other words, Facebook won't stop collecting data, by leveraging a little loophole where it can still find some workaround to the situation if ever users want to clear every off-Facebook activities.
Then deep inside its Help Center, Facebook clarifies that: “Your future off-Facebook activity will be disconnected within 48 hours from when it's received. During this time it may be used for measurement purposes and to make improvements to our ads systems."
And even after the 48 hours are up, the 'Off-Facebook Activity' controls won’t actually delete users' browsing data from Facebook’s servers. It merely decouples the information from users' personal profile, and users data will still show up in aggregated contexts.
As explained by Jay Nancarrow, Facebook’s director of policy communications:
In an earlier blog post aimed at advertisers, Facebook reassured them that it would "still be able to provide accurate measurement," as the company continues to appeal businesses for their "Facebook investment."
So here, the 'Off-Facebook Activity' is just a mere control to remove the link between users and their browsing habits, but doesn't necessarily mean removing the big stream of data.
Facebook's knowledge of user information is scattered in many databases, rather than one centralized location. 'Off-Facebook Activity' essentially removes one of that. The company can still do many more considering that it has many other databases of individual users to 'recreate' what it knew.