Facebook revamps Access Your Information in the name of transparency

In a blog post, Facebook has announced that it has revamped the Access Your Information functionality for its service, saying that the changes make the feature "more usable and transparent."

The app has broken out the existing Your Information and Information About You sections into eight new categories:

• Your Activity Across Facebook
• Friends and Followers
• Preferences
• Personal Information
• Logged Information
• Ads Information
• Apps and Websites Off of Facebook
• Security and Login Information

Each of the categories contains subcategories to more finely group alike data together. In order to make finding this data easier, the company has also introduced new search functionality.

We've also added search functionality. You can now find data categories simply by searching for them. For example, if you start searching for information about your location history, searching for "location" should start generating some suggestions.

Facebook is also making it more clear how your information is leading to certain things, like seeing ads.

We are also adding information about how your data may be used to personalize your experience on Facebook. For example, you might see that your primary location was one of multiple signals that informed a recent ad you saw for a food delivery app. This information is already available in our Why Am I Seeing This tool, but we wanted to make it easier for people to discover.

The company says that its new Access Your Information functionality is available now on both iOS and Android and that it will roll out to other platforms "soon." Facebook has come under increasing scrutiny with how it handles user data. Just today, WhatsApp released clarifying information to try and reassure users after its new terms and conditions required users to share more data with Facebook, even if they had previously opted out.