In a survey by the Ponemon Institute of the Facebook users soon after its CEO Mark Zuckerberg's testimony last year during the Congressional hearings revealed that despite the company's oft-repeated commitments to privacy in the public, actually the users mistrust the company to the extent of 79 percent. In fact, Facebook users' confidence in the company had plunged by 66 percent after the Cambridge Analytica furore a year before.
To address the issue, Facebook on Tuesday announced that it has updated its "Privacy" options with a new feature that will help stop users from being tracked. The latest update comes as the first big privacy-related move of Facebook in 2020 but finally the company seems to have confirmed that they do track users everywhere, and anytime.
Facebook has more than two billion users around the world and it appears to focus on allowing the everyday user more control over what info they share. According to the company, users will receive a prompt over the next few weeks, which will surface in each user's Facebook News Feed. It will send the user to the freshly-updated "Privacy Checkup" tool that will allow users to control who can see their posts and private information, turn on login alerts and and review the information that Facebook shares with third-party apps.
In addition, the company announced a new "Off-Facebook Activity" tool that will allow the user to see what kind of information Facebook obtains from third-party companies about them. Such information is typically used to show targeted ads, but now users can see what kind of information Facebook has collected and clear that data from the account if they want.
Facebook Login often lets users sign in to other apps and services, like games and streaming platforms, using their Facebook account. If the "Login Notification" option is switched on, the notifications will alert the user when they use Facebook Login to sign in to third-party apps to keep track of how the account is being used.
However, these updates don't necessarily mean that Facebook will never track the user by any service ever again.The number of items on the "What You Can Do" list in the "Settings" option gives an idea of the intricate nature of the tracking business of Facebook. Thus, users should always be mindful of the privacy notifications in the coming weeks.
