Facebook is introducing a tool that may make it harder for websites to track you by rachsandl
it will now let users see which outside websites are tracking their activity and prevent Facebook from using that data for ad targeting—a small, but potentially powerful change that could weaken Facebook’s ad tools while making Facebook ads less invasive for users.
The tool, called Off-Facebook Activity, shows users a summary of the information other apps and websites have sent Facebook and lets them clear it from their account.It doesn’t prevent Facebook from collecting that data in the first place, but instead keeps it anonymized. The new tool will be rolled out gradually over the coming months, starting with Ireland, South Korea and Spain.
It’s unclear whether users will take advantage of the option en masse, since the only way to turn it on is by going to the Settings menu. But even so, the ability to target hyper-specific ads to users is what makes Facebook so attractive to advertisers. Without that, the company admits it might lose money.
“If this were widely adopted, it would mean less overall revenue for Facebook,” David Baser, a director of product management at the company, told the: Right now, if you go to a clothing retailer’s website and click on a pair of pants, an ad for that same pair of pants might show up on Facebook minutes later.
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