For years, my Facebook account has practically sat dormant. It’s a nostalgic relic of the past that lets me occasionally walk down the memory lane of my life’s first two decades. But it’s also a weak link in my digital privacy. I’ve known for years that Facebook is constantly watching, studying me as I wander through the web. Still, I never gathered up the courage to delete my account and burn it to the ground once and for all. Until last week, that is.
The final nail in the Facebook coffin
A few days ago, I found myself staring wide-eyed at the rundown of all the nearly 1,400 websites and apps that have gathered data on me and shared it with Facebook. I was looking at the Off-Facebook Activity tool, one of the recent additions to Facebook’s suite of security options for users that I had fortuitously stumbled upon. Moments later, my cursor was hovering over the Delete Account button.
Facebook knows a lot about you. After the countless controversies and privacy “bugs,” you probably already knew that. What most people are not familiar with, however, is the vast network of third parties that has enabled
Think of Facebook as a modern, advanced Rolodex hosting sophisticated profiles of billions of people. Each profile features hordes of intricate personal details about your behavior such as your interests, what do you like to shop, when do you shop, what devices do you own, and more.
But Facebook isn’t the only one responsible for maintaining this database. The social network’s trackers are engineered into hundreds of thousands of apps and websites. They all collect data and add to this digital profile of you. In return, these apps and websites are able to take advantage of Facebook’s business tools that help them understand you and serve you highly personalized experiences.
How does the off-Facebook activity tool work?
As its name suggests, the Off-Facebook Activity page lists down every app or website that has tracked you and shared the information with
Plus, the off-Facebook Activity hub highlights the true extent of the lengths that ad companies like
For instance, one of the apps in my off-Facebook activity is a workout app called Seven. I haven’t granted a single permission to Seven, but it knows what sort of exercises I do, and based on that,
Similarly, LinkedIn, where I spent five minutes responding to a few pending messages last weekend, had somehow managed to log and share 200 such tiny pieces of information with Facebook.
How to use the off-Facebook activity tool
On the off-Facebook Activity page itself,
But soon, you will discover that most of these interactions are labeled “Custom” and there’s no way for you to actually figure out exactly what kind of data these third-party apps and websites are sharing with Facebook.
Custom events are developed by a business itself to cater to a specific action they may have on their website or app. Facebook suggests reaching out to the business itself if you’d like to learn more about them.
Fortunately, what Facebook lacks in transparency, it makes up for in control. Even though it’s near to impossible for you to extract what sort of information a given business is hoarding, the off-
What you can do to limit third-party Facebook data collection
These options are present under Settings > Your Facebook Information > Off
Facebook says that when you opt out, it gets rid of the identifier (such as a device ID, email, or phone number) that lets it link the collected data with your personal profile. It will continue to receive the data anonymously, though.
Similarly, when you delete all your off-Facebook activity with the “Clear History” button at the top,
Also on the top, you will find a worrying note that warns: “Some of your activity may not appear here.” This, Facebook tells me, is the kind of data it has received from a third-party but can’t quite verify belongs to you.
What’s more, you can ask Facebook to quit associating third-party data with you entirely as well. This won’t have any significant impact on your
Alternatively, if you are like me and downright shaken with this revelation, you can always nuke your Facebook account. That option is at Settings > Your
It’s worth noting that in its policy, it also mentions that “copies of your information may remain after the 90 days in backup storage that [Facebook] uses to recover in the event of a disaster, software error, or other data loss event. [
You may never truly be able to escape Facebook, however. The chances are even after you bury your account, the social network will retain and update your “shadow profile.” If this happens, all you can do is try to block trackers on your phone and browser to ensure no app or website is still covertly feeding your data to