With the increased penetration of online advertising, businesses often share data about people’s interactions on their websites with ad platforms and other services. On an average person with a smartphone has more than 80 apps and uses about 40 of them every month, which makes it difficult for people to keep track of who has information about them and what it’s used for.
Thus, to help people understand what apps are sending their data to Facebook, the social media giant has introducing a new way to view and control your off-Facebook activity. Off-Facebook Activity lets you see a summary of the apps and websites that send Facebook information about your activity. You can also this information from your account if you want to.
What Is Off-Facebook Activity?
With Off-Facebook Activity, you can see and control the data that other apps and websites share with Facebook. You can also see a summary of the information other apps and websites have sent Facebook through our online business tools, like Facebook Pixel or Facebook Login; disconnect this information from your account if you want to; and choose to disconnect future off-Facebook activity from your account. You can do this for all of your off-Facebook activity, or just for specific apps and websites.
The Off-Facebook Activity is available first to people in Ireland, South Korea and Spain. The company will roll out the activity to everywhere in the coming months.
What Happens When You Clear Your Off-Facebook Activity
If you clear your off-Facebook activity, Facebook will remove your identifying information from the data that apps and websites choose to send us.
‘We won’t know which websites you visited or what you did there, and we won’t use any of the data you disconnect to target ads to you on Facebook, Instagram or Messenger. We expect this could have some impact on our business, but we believe giving people control over their data is more important,’ said Facebook.
When you visit Off-Facebook Activity, you’ll see the websites and apps that you use regularly, but you might also see some services that you don’t recognise.
