Facebook Opens Off-Facebook Activity Tool to Everyone

Manage the data other sites send to Facebook

By
Rob LeFebvre
Rob LeFebvre
Rob LeFebvre
Associate Editorial Director, News
  • UCLA
  • California State University, Northridge
Rob LeFebvre is the Associate Editorial Director, News for Lifewire. He has been a technology writer for more than 12 years with articles appearing in 148Apps, Cult of Mac, Engadget, and more.
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Updated on January 28, 2020 01:04PM EST

What: Facebook opened up its Off-Facebook Activity Tool to all its users.

How: You can use the tool to see what information has been shared from other sites, and delete it.

Why Do You Care: Managing your privacy is important, even if it falls to you to do so.

We’ve all had that experience where we look at a pair of shoes on the web, only to find ads for shoes showing up on our Facebook feed. It’s how advertisers on Facebook get us to buy things; obviously if we were looking at them, we’re more likely to purchase.

IPhone with Off-Facebook Activity Tool on its screen
Original image by Unsplash

Now Facebook brings a tool, soft-launched last August, to all of us that lets us manage this information transfer. Called the Off-Facebook Activity Tool, it will let you see what things are being sent to Facebook, and then delete them if you want.

“As of today, our Off-Facebook Activity tool is available to people on Facebook around the world,” wrote Mark Zuckerberg in a blog post. “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.”

While it’s still part of Facebook’s business model to have this information passed along, a tool that lets you manage it is a nice step forward toward transparency and privacy control.

Now you can see a summary of that information and clear it from your account if you want to.

The worldwide release marks Facebook’s nod to Data Privacy Day, and the announcement also included information about two other initiatives. The Privacy Checkup Tool got an update recently, according to Zuckerberg, and you’ll soon see another prompt to run through it and make sure your account is as locked down as you’d like it.

In addition, Zuckerberg pointed out the Login Notifications settings, which rolled out in January 2020. These can alert you when you login to third-party apps, games, and streaming platforms using Facebook’s Login system. Because knowing is half the battle.

Via: MacRumors

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