Off-Facebook Activity: is it really worth it? and why now?

Off-Facebook Activity: After many years of promising more transparency, Facebook shows us how it collects and collects our data from other companies. Facebook's new tool is really enlightening if we want to take a look at who is watching us (everyone).

Facebook was released this week the portal Off-Facebook Activity to give users a different and more detailed perspective on the data it receives from other businesses.

The Off-Facebook Activity portal is exactly what it sounds like: activities you had in other services, such as an app on your phone or a store from which you shopped. It generally shows you all the data that Facebook collects from external sources. Facebook, of course, matches this data to the rest of the information it has collected from you and uses it for marketing purposes.

Variations of this process have been occurring for years. Facebook acquired the Atlas advertising platform in 2013 and launched it in 2014. The platform aims to combine your browsing history, your shopping and other online and offline histories into a single profile.

If you search the new Facebook portal you will find applications and websites that transmit and receive information on the largest social network. The new app lets you delete the previous activity if you select "Delete History" at the top of the list of apps, or web pages that track you. This does not mean, however, that websites or applications will stop tracking you.

The largest social network justifies its data collection behavior with the known cassette:

"The data can be used for measurement purposes and to improve our ad systems."

By deleting the data, and before Facebook collects the next one, you will still see ads, but they will be less tailored to your profile. .

It is worth mentioning that even if you do not have a Facebook account, the company still creates your profile.

The move of Facebook with the creation of the Off-Facebook Activity portal, was something we expected, as there was a lot of pressure (policies and social) recent years. However, the choice of the Off-Facebook Activity portal does not seem to be random, as it does not display the data collected by the same Facebook, but the ones it receives from third parties.
In this way, the largest social network, throws the ball on the tiles, and takes our eyes off the field. However, to say something positive, it was a start. As long as the pressure continues, and the blackmail of government surveillance of the social network, there is a chance that we will see other concessions.