JOIN USFacebook does little to allay privacy concerns
After promising it for almost two years, Facebook finally rolled out the ‘Clear history’ button for all its users recently. The social media giant has introduced a ‘Off-Facebook Activity’, which allows users to share the data that third-party apps and websites share with it; in other words the activity that Facebook tracks when you’re not actually using Facebook (creepy!).
In the app’s own words, ‘Off-Facebook activity includes information that businesses and organisations share with us about your interactions with them, such as visiting their apps or websites.’
Apar Gupta, executive director of Internet Freedom Foundation, is not impressed with the step.
“There’s no guarantee that if you clear history on your end, the profile that Facebook has created of you is also deleted. This one button doesn’t change the model of surveillance capitalism that companies such as Facebook follow. It is continuously collecting information on your biases and habits and profiting off it in different ways,” he points out.
He says that the need of the hour is a data protection authority. “This would help understand what elements are deleted and what is retained. And this is non-existent in India,” he adds.
Tech experts from across the globe feel the same, and have been calling the entire thing ‘a farce’. One is inclined to agree with them, because when you try to clear your ‘off-Facebook activity from your account’, here is what the app tells you:
Your activity history will be disconnected from your account. We’ll continue to receive your activity from the businesses and organisations you visit in the future.
“Activity history is the browsing history of a user, and once you clear history, this will be not identified with you anymore. However, that does not mean that the browsing history would be deleted from the FB features, and would also not opt you out from FB tracking your future browsing. It just means that the information would not be attributable to you, though that still doesn’t clear up what they are going to do with this information in the future,” says Torsha Sarkar, policy officer at The Centre for Internet & Society.
Clearing your history may log you out of some apps and websites. If this happens, you can still use Facebook to log back in.
“If your browsing history involves login into some third-party apps (games, quizzes, similar applications), then you might be logged out of those upon clearing history. You can log back in, but again, it is not clear if FB will collect data once again, or what they will do with the information,” says Torsha.
You’ll still see the same number of ads. Your ad preferences and actions you take on Facebook will be used to show you relevant ads
“FB also collects background information on the sites you visit and does targeted advertisement based on these. The clear history does not delete these information, and you would continue to get targeted ads,” explains Torsha.
Here is how you can clear your browsing history...
On Facebook, go to Settings- Your Facebook Information- Off-Facebook Activity. It will show you all the apps and websites that have shared your activity, which they track through your visits, even if you are not logged into Facebook.