What is the new “Off-Facebook Activity” and how does it work?
What is the new “Off-Facebook Activity” and how does it work?
Almost two years ago, Vipsok promised its users that it would give them the ability to delete the browsing history it uses to display personalized ads, as it finally fulfills its promise and finally provides a privacy control to everyone.
The “Off-Facebook Activity” tool is now available to everyone. It had been available in select markets in some countries, including Ireland and South Korea, who had acquired it since last August, but now it is available to everyone.
What is this tool and how does it work?
You can find this tool in the Settings menu of the Facebook smartphone app right now. It is not known when it will be available for your desktop, here is what it will look like:
Once you are there, you will be in front of a tool that will provide you with transparent management of your Facebook activity and you will get a list of every website and application that Facebook tracks when you don't actually use Facebook. It is still mysterious and strange that Facebook does this at all, but you now know exactly when, how, and how often data is harvested from those sites and applications.
If you just want to get rid of all this data, there is the big Clear History button there. Facebook warns that doing so may exit you from the services you use to log in to Facebook, such as Spotify, but you can only login again. It will also continue to harvest data from those sites forward unless you specifically choose, which is another option in the Manage Future Activity section of the list.
And if you choose to turn off data collection, Facebook says you still see the same number of ads as before, but it will be less personalized. There is also a major pull point for this: only “disconnected” data from your account, rather than being deleted entirely from Facebook servers.
Even if it isn't a perfect solution to Facebook's crawling and unnecessary data collection practices, it's a good idea at least to have some
transparency about what the service knows about you. You might be better off deleting Facebook entirely, but if not, you should consider separating your browsing habits from their clutches.
Click on the option "Manage your activity outside of Facebook" from the side menu, and here shows you all the applications and sites that use your information, and the great thing about it is that you will be able to turn off the future activities of any site or application by just clicking on the application or site. Then, click "Turn off future activities".
How to delete your activity history outside Facebook
If you do not want to share any information or details about you regarding the sites and applications that you use with a Facebook account, then you can easily delete your activity history outside of Facebook by just clicking on the "Manage Future Activity" option from the side menu. Then, click on "Manage Future Activity", and finally, disable this option as in the above screenshot by just dragging the cursor to the left.
