On the internet, online ad targeting is somehow murky. It works behind the scene, doing things secretly and discreetly.
What it does, is doing what it can to track, identify and understand users' online behavior, to then show ads that are relevant to their interest. This happens because most things on the internet aren't free. Companies need to make money, and showing advertisement is one of the most relevant.
However, most people don't realize this.
Two of the largest online ad providers are Google and Facebook. Thriving on ads, the two are known to aggressively track users to show better ads. They have gone to great lengths to obtain that data, which can be troubling for those privacy concerned individuals.
Joana Varon, Becca Ricks and Hang Do Thi Duc are researchers from Mozilla, and they have developed a browser extension called 'Fuzzify.me' to educate users on how they’re being targeted by Facebook ads and giving them the needed tools to bypass some of them.
Available as an extension on both Firefox and Google Chrome, users must first turn off their ad blockers to use it. They need to use Facebook like they usual, and not using Private Mode or Incognito. With the extension enabled, Fuzzify.me tracks all Facebook ads users are presented, and provide the reasons why those specific ads are being shown.
For example, users can see more information about why an ad was targeted to them, such as because of their age or location.
This information is already present on Facebook's "Why am I seeing this?" feature. However, the extension offers a less subtle way for users to be informed about how they're being targeted by advertisers.
Ultimately, the extension allows users to clear out all of their ad preferences. Fuzzify.me has an option to "Clean your ads preferences now" which redirects users to a modified Facebook ad preferences page which allows them to easily remove interests that Facebook compiled. Doing this should severely limit the information advertisers can use.
"That’s why we built fuzzify.me — a browser extension for Firefox and Chrome that helps people to thwart future targeted ads and gain transparency into Facebook’s ad platform."
Joana Varon said that Fuzzify.me grew out of a research project into what she says are the sexist ways in which online ads are typically served.
To idea to create the extension, was created when the team partnered with 'Who Targets Me', a project that seeks to demystify ad targeting. Who Targets Me had collected ads served to about 7,000 people who had downloaded their extension. Varon found that among people who had downloaded the extension, the majority of ads are about baby clothing, products, weight loss programs and others geared for women.
According to Varon, "The idea of the extension is to bring transparency [to ad targeting] and start a discussion about who is targeting you."
Apparently, Facebook also allows this, but its option is a hassle to most people, as it is indeed confusing. Facebook‘s developers made it difficult for users to manage their ad preferences on purpose. They know that users probably don’t have the time and inclination to resist its data collection efforts.
The Fuzzify.me extension wants to ease this process, as well as encouraging users to clean their data on a regular basis to get more insight about how advertisers are targeting them, and also to better determine whether Facebook’s privacy controls really do work as they're supposed to.