Is There Anything You Can Do About Facebook Tracking?
A lot of people are extremely concerned about their privacy on Facebook. If you are one of them, you have every reason to be upset since Facebook is following your every move ? and this includes everything you do outside of its network.
It now follows you as you surf the net and use apps on your smartphone so it can target ads more specifically at you. And while it does not reveal your identity to their advertisers, it specifically matches the ads to people who fit the advertisers’ preference. Does this sound creepy enough? For a lot of people, it really is.
So, what should you do about it? Should you quit Facebook to avoid being tracked? Well, you don’t need to ? if you will take some time to understand Facebook’s 9,000-word privacy policy and do the necessary steps to control which information gets shared.
Tips to Avoid Facebook Tracking
- Manage your ad preferences. Facebook now offers its users in the US the ability to edit their ad preferences. To do this, you can click on the corner icon of an ad and select “Why am I seeing this?” from the pop-up menu. Underneath the explanation, you will see a link that allows you to manage and edit your ad preferences. Click on this link and remove items in the list as you see fit. By doing this, you can make Facebook show less albeit more targeted ads.
- Use AboutAds. Use the ad industry website AboutAds to tell Facebook and other companies to stop tracking you. By using this website, you can opt out of several ad companies all at once without having to visit each of their websites. Note: You need to do this for every browser on every device that you used to log in to Facebook.
- Turn off location sharing. Thankfully, you can tell Facebook to stop tracking you and limit it from using the information it collected to target ads at you. If you are using an iPhone, you need to go to Settings > Privacy > Advertising, and turn on Limit Ad Tracking. If you are an Android phone user, go to Settings > Accounts > Google > Ads and click “Opt out of interest-based ads”.
Please take note that while you can opt out of targeted ads, you would keep seeing advertisements. In addition, you cannot keep Facebook and other companies from tracking you. They just wouldn’t use the information they collected to show ads targeted at you. That’s the sad reality you have to face if you want to keep using Facebook.
