Facebook’s Chief Financial Officer David Wehner has confirmed that ‘Clear History’ tool, a privacy feature that according to the social platform will delete all the information Facebook gathers for a user from third-party apps and websites, will launch later this year.
The privacy tool was promised to launch last year, just before the Facebook’s F8 developer conference. During the conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained the working of the tool will be identical one’s clear browser history feature. If rolled out, the Clear History tool will help the company to regain trust in its users following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
In your web browser, you have a simple way to clear your cookies and history. The idea is a lot of sites need cookies to work, but you should still be able to flush your history whenever you want. We’re building a version of this for Facebook too. It will be a simple control to clear your browsing history on Facebook — what you’ve clicked on, websites you’ve visited, and so on,’ Zuckerberg said in a post.
While a number of policies were put in place last year on how third-party apps collect your personal information, the tool would give more transparency to users on their data being collected and which apps are collecting it. And if they want to wipe out that information from the Facebook.
According to the media reports, Facebook is planning to commence testing the tool later this year,
‘We want to make sure this works the way it should for everyone on Facebook, which is taking longer than expected,’ Facebook said.