Facebook Activity Tracker – How To Switch It Off

Facebook Activity Tracker

Have you ever felt like Facebook is stalking you? Have they shown you ads that are strangely specific to conversations you have had or things that you have bought?

Just like Big Brother, Facebook has been watching your every move… They record your website visits and how you use your apps, even when you are not logged in!

Facebook has more than 2 billion users, but it comes at a price. Most people just click ‘Yes’ when they signup and don’t bother reading the fine print.

It came to a head two years ago when the social media giant faced a massive backlash from users. It became evident that Cambridge Analytica (a data firm) had harvested personal information from up to 87 million Facebook users without their knowledge.

Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook, admitted “this was a major breach of trust”.

Following this, Facebook promised to do better by increasing its user privacy and in line with this, it recently unveiled its “Off-Facebook Activity Tracker”…

What is the Off-Facebook Activity Tracker?

The Off-Facebook Activity Tracker lets you view and somewhat control the data that third party websites and apps share with Facebook about you.

You can open and check the Tracker as follows –

1. Open the Facebook app on your smart phone
2. Press on the 3 vertical lines in the bottom right corner of your app
3. Press on ‘Settings & Privacy’ then ‘Privacy Shortcuts’
4. Scroll down to the section titled ‘Your Facebook Information’ and press ‘View or clear your off-Facebook activity’

Here you will see all of the apps that are in cahoots with Facebook and reporting back to them with your personal information.

How Do You Turn This Off?

To turn this feature off is relatively easy –

1. Press on ‘More Options’ (the last option under ‘What can you do’)
2. Press on ‘Manage Future Activity’
3. Turn off the switch next to ‘Future off-Facebook activity’

What Does This Mean?

By turning off your future off-Facebook activity, Facebook will still collect your personal information, however they will not track and associate it with your personal account anymore.

Does Instagram Have the Same Feature?

Instagram does not have the same feature. Although because Facebook now own Instagram, if you turn off this feature in Facebook it should also prevent Instagram from tracking and storing your information.

Want to Know More?

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