WASHINGTON: Social media company Facebook on Tuesday said that a newfeature allowing users of the network to view and delete data it hascollected from third parties will be available to its estimated two billionmembers worldwide.
The new feature, part of a stepped-up effort to improve privacy practices,allows users to see and clear “off Facebook activity” used for targetedadvertising.
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the tool offers “a new levelof transparency and control” for the social network, which has been roiledby revelations in the past few years on how it collects and uses data.
“We’ve been working on this for a while because we had to rebuild some ofour systems to make this possible.”
Zuckerberg said Facebook users will be prompted to review their data whenthey check their feeds, as part of a “privacy checkup” implemented by thesocial network.
*Read more: Facebook says it can locate users who opt out of trackinglink*
“As of today, our Off-Facebook Activity tool is available to people onFacebook around the world,” Zuckerberg said in a blog post.
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The feature will lift a veil on some aspects of Facebook’s practices thatincluding collecting data from third-party apps, Facebook logins, “likes”and other techniques that determine its ads served up to users.
“Other businesses send us information about your activity on their sitesand we use that information to show you ads that are relevant to you. Nowyou can see a summary of that information and clear it from your account ifyou want to,” Zuckerberg said.
The move is part of an effort by Facebook to shore up its image in the wakeof a series of privacy scandals, including the hijacking of personal dataon millions of users by a British consultancy developing voter profiles forDonald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“One of our main goals for the next decade is to build much strongerprivacy protections for everyone on Facebook,” Zuckerberg said.
“Over the next few weeks we’ll show nearly two billion people around theworld a prompt encouraging them to review their privacy settings.” -APP/AFP
