It is no secret that Facebook are well aware of what its users are doing both on and off their website. Facebook have been able to track what we’re doing elsewhere on the Internet through the use of cookies and their ubiquitous social media buttons that are placed on millions of websites throughout cyberspace.
And last year they announced that the information it gleans from your surfing activity could be shared with third party advertisers to help target you with more specific and relevant adverts.
If you wanted to opt out of this particular avenue of data collection then you needed to head away from Facebook and go to the Digital Advertising Alliance website, which stopped Facebook and other websites from tracking you around the web.
This, however, was not an ideal solution. Not only did you have to do if for every device and every browser you logged onto Facebook with, but if you cleared your computer of cookies, you’d need to do it all over again. A pain, basically.
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However Facebook have introduced another option on its settings page that allows users to stop Facebook from sharing information about you with third parties. If you want to opt out of interest based advertising, simply set the “Ads based on my use of websites and apps” to Off.
Facebook have claimed it will be a master option that will control this setting on all devices you log into Facebook with – they state…
If you choose to use this tool, it will become the master control for online interest-based advertising across all of your devices and browsers where you use Facebook.
Of course, providing you don’t use ad blocking software, you’re still going to see the same number of adverts, and they may still be targeted towards you based on what information you share with Facebook directly, but they may appear to “follow you around the web” a little less.
Bear in mind though, this stops Facebook from sharing this information with advertisers, but they’re still tracking you everywhere you go, and there is little you can do about that – not if you want a Facebook account, any way.
If advertising privacy is a concern then setting this option (which is of course defaulted to “on”) is a must do. If you don’t care if advertisers know your online buying interests, then continue as you were.