Off-Facebook ActivitySource: Facebook

What you need to know

  • Facebook has announced that its new Off-Facebook Activity feature is now rolling out to all users.
  • Originally announced in August of 2019, it lets you see what information websites and apps share with Facebook.
  • It also gives you the option to disconnect yourself from all of it, or specific apps and websites.

Facebook has announced that its new "Off-Facebook Activity" feature is now rolling out to all users.

In a a press release it said:

As of today, our Off-Facebook Activity tool is available to people on Facebook around the world. Other businesses send us information about your activity on their sites and we use that information to show you ads that are relevant to you. Now you can see a summary of that information and clear it from your account if you want to.

Off-Facebook Activity marks a new level of transparency and control. We've been working on this for a while because we had to rebuild some of our systems to make this possible.

Facebook also plans to notify all 2 billion of its users over the next few weeks, prompting people to review their privacy settings, adjusting permissions for posts, profile information and strengthening account security.

Furthermore, it has confirmed that earlier this month it rolled out Login notifications to alert you when you use a Facebook Login to sign in to third-party apps.

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Off-Facebook activity is definitely a big and welcome change. By way of explanation, back in August, it gave this example:

Imagine a clothing website wants to show ads to people who are interested in a new style of shoes. They can send information to Facebook saying someone on a particular device looked at those shoes. If that device information matches someone's Facebook account, we can show ads about those shoes to that person. To explain this further, we put together some resources here.

With the new feature you can:

  • See a summary of the information other apps and websites have sent Facebook through our online business tools, like Facebook Pixel or Facebook Login;
  • Disconnect this information from your account if you want to; and
  • Choose to disconnect future off-Facebook activity from your account. You can do this for all of your off-Facebook activity, or just for specific apps and websites.

The new feature was made available in Ireland, South Korea, and Spain initially, Facebook says it will continue to roll it out everywhere over the coming months.