See how Facebook tracks even more information about you than you thought and how to prevent it with their new “‘Off-Facebook Activity’” tool

We all know that Facebook can track you moves and searches and app uses, and use this data to help them to target posts and adverts your way.

Not exactly a new revelation

But did you know that they also have the ability to gather such tracking data even when you are not logged into Facebook?

And there are are no new privacy violation here, as per your terms and conditions that you have agreed to when you signed up for using Facebook.

In fact Facebook, and plenty of other online companies, have been operating in conjunction with websites, apps and stores to track and target customers via their online activities for years.

However, earlier this year Facebook launched a new feature called the Off-Facebook Activity tool to the world. Initially only available to people in Spain, Ireland, and South Korea, it was rolled out worldwide on Tuesday 28th January 2020, although not widely known or shouted about, probably as it will affect Facebook operations.

The Off-Facebook Activity tool allows users to see and control the data that other apps and websites share with Facebook. And more importantly, the Off-Facebook Activity tool also allows you to stop Facebook from tracking your personal future online activity when you are not even logged into Facebook, by making the data collection anonymous, with its Manage Future Activity option.

As Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said “Other businesses send us information about your activity on their sites and we use that information to show you ads that are relevant to you. Now you can see a summary of that information and clear it from your account if you want to”.

“If you clear your off-Facebook activity, we’ll 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,” says Facebook. So if a user does disable this feature, Facebook will still receive information on their off-Facebook activity from other websites. However, that information is now made anonymous since it has been disconnected from a user’s account.

You can go to your “Off-Facebook Activity tool” via this link : https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/ or follow the instructions below >

How to access the Off-Facebook Activity tool
– Go to Settings in your Facebook app.
– Go to Your Facebook Information
– Choose Off-Facebook Activity.
– From here, you can choose specific apps to see how many interactions you had with an app or a website. You can download activity details by clicking on the number of interactions and clicking Download Activity Details at the bottom of the popup.
To clear your history of all apps, click on the Clear History toward the top.
– But if you click on More Options and select Manage Future Activity you have the ability to stop any Future Off Facebook Activity being sent in your name and that data is anonymous.
(nice of them to hide this on a hidden “more options” menu!)

Of course it is not just Facebook that has been tracking your data and online activity. Sites like Google are also collecting data, and they give you the option to view and clear your WHOLE Google search history, not just what is on your PC, but everything on your Google account ( https://www.satandpcguy.com/2016/09/04/want-see-every-google-search-ever-made-scary-tool-google-allows/ ) But at least Facebooks move is one step further in seeing how the online world can see exactly what you are doing and how you can prevent it…