“Off-Facebook Activity” shows a summary of the apps and websites sending information to Facebook and ... [+]
Ever been served a Facebook ad showing some headphones you were just looking at online? It’s not a conspiracy, there’s a good reason: The sites you were browsing previously will often send your activity to Facebook.
It’s pretty intrusive to say the least, and in light of increasing realization that this is happening, Facebook is launching a new feature, "Off-Facebook Activity," which it says will allow you to see and control the data that apps and websites share with the social networking site.
The new feature shows a summary of the apps and websites sending information to Facebook and provides the option to clear it, Facebook’s chief privacy officer Erin Egan and director of product management David Baser said in a blog post.
The feature was promised by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg back in 2018 following the fall out from the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Off-Facebook activity: What does it do?
According to Facebook, the new feature will allow you to see a summary of the information other apps and websites have sent the social networking site through a tool called Facebook Pixel or the Facebook Login service.
You will then have the option to disconnect this information from your account if you want to. In addition, you can choose to disconnect future off-Facebook activity from your account. This can apparently cover all your off-Facebook activity, or just specific apps and websites.
Off-Facebook Activity will first be made available to people in Ireland, South Korea and Spain, before being rolled out globally.
So is it a good thing? Jake Moore, cybersecurity expert at ESET sees the move as “a step forward in being more open about tracking and sharing internet habits online.”
Off-Facebook Activity: Not a privacy tool
But unfortunately, as is often the case with Facebook, the new tool is not all it seems.
If you clear your off-Facebook activity, the social network says it will “remove your identifying information from the data that apps and websites choose to send us.”
However, as Wired points out, even after you turn off the ability for Facebook to collect your data to be used for ads, the social network will carry on collecting the information. The data will still remain connected to your account for two days.
In a Help Center post, Facebook admits: “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 your Off-Facebook Activity won’t be deleted from the social network’s servers. Instead, it just decouples this from your personal information and it will still show up in aggregated form.
With firms such as Apple making a big deal about privacy, Facebook knows it has to catch up. But experts question whether it’s doing so in the right way. “I wouldn't trust Facebook more now,” says ethical hacker John Opdenakker. “The reason that they do this is not because they care so much about their users’ privacy all of a sudden, but because they have no choice after the scandals like Cambridge Analytica.”
What to do
Facebook has a reputation for collecting data when users might not be 100% aware. It came under fire recently when it emerged the social network was hiring contractors to listen in to conversations made via its Messenger voice to text service.
I said at the time that it was a good time to consider deleting Facebook–or at least to consider removing the app from your phone.
“If you are worried about your privacy, avoid using Facebook,” says independent security researcher Sean Wright. “If you still have to, use a separate browser to your ordinary browser,” he says. “Or there are some fantastic browser extensions which allow you to create isolated session containers to prevent sites from viewing one another.”
Another way to prevent tracking is to use a VPN service. Moore advises: “If people are concerned with their data being shared between sites and social networks, I would recommend they use private browsing with a VPN for all online shopping to keep their data private and contained.”
