
When you use the Facebook mobile app, whether you’re scrolling through your news feed, tagging a family photo on the Golden Gate Bridge, or just leaving the app idling in the background, the company can collect data about your location to use for targeting ads. On a computer: Click your profile picture in the top right of the Facebook home page > Settings & privacy > Settings > Your Facebook information > Off-Facebook activity.įrom there, you can click “Clear previous activity.” To prevent the data from being used for targeted ads going forward, tap “Disconnect future activity.” You can go through a list one by one and disable Future Off-Facebook Activity for specific services where you don’t need Facebook Login. Turning off Future Activity disables the Facebook Login tool that lets you sign in to other apps and websites using your Facebook credentials. But again, Facebook says that the data won’t be used to target you with ads. Note that after you turn it off, other companies will keep sending Facebook information about you.

You’ll also find a setting called Manage Future Activity, which lets you keep your history cleared by default. Instead, it “disconnects” the data from your account, preventing the company from using it for targeted ads.įacebook keeps a copy of that information-and will continue to use it for analytics reports provided to other websites and detailed performance measurements for the company’s advertising clients. It houses the Clear History button, which, despite the name, doesn’t actually delete anything.
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This guide will lead you to the most useful Facebook privacy settings, plus a few outside tools to further limit the company’s tracking.īelow, you’ll find instructions on how to:

It’s important for users who care about their privacy to understand the available settings-even if these controls don’t offer all the protections you might want.

Facebook has 22 pages of settings, and many privacy controls aren’t on the page labeled “Privacy.” (Facebook later shut down the app’s facial recognition features.) It can even be hard to find the Facebook settings that do work as you’d expect. Then there’s the facial recognition control that was missing on hundreds of millions of accounts. Take the “clear history” button: It doesn’t actually delete anything. Facebook’s privacy settings are confusing.
