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How to protect your privacy from Facebook – and what doesn't work
Facebook has not been making friends lately with its policy changes. While some people have left, others find it hard to leave. It’s where their friends and social groups — from old co-workers to church members to fellow sufferers of obscure diseases — are.
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In addition, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, tracks your activity not just on Facebook, but across the internet with Meta’s tracking pixel. If you’d rather not have Big Zucker looking over your shoulder, here’s what you can do to limit how much Meta can track you.
Facebook has been collecting data on you for years
Before getting into protecting your privacy, you should know what data Facebook has already been collecting data on you for years. Besides the obvious — your name and that you liked Aunt Jodie’s funny cat picture — companies that use Facebook Business Tools, such as Facebook Pixel, the Facebook Software Development Kit (SDK), and Facebook Login and Account Kit, also share what they know about you with Facebook.
Specifically, Meta tracks when you’re:
- Opening an app
- Logging into an app with Facebook
- Viewing content
- Searching for an item
- Adding an item to a shopping cart
- Making a purchase
- Making a donation
- When you’ve been naughty or nice
OK, I made up the last one, but when you use Facebook, you really are giving up your privacy in ways that would make Santa Claus envious. Don’t believe it? According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Facebook tracks you on 30% of the top 10,000 websites. On my own account, I see that Facebook and its partners have data on me from 955 apps and websites that I’ve used or visited in the last 180 days.
That includes every time I checked my Ring doorbell, the time I checked StubHub for WVU-Kansas basketball tickets, and how often I checked into Zillow when searching for a new home. And, of course, what sites I visit daily.
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Also keep in mind that things that sound like they help, such as clearing your Facebook history, may not help at all. Clearing your history, for example, doesn’t delete anything. Instead, all it does is disconnect your activity history from your account. Meta will continue to receive your activity from the businesses and organizations you visit in the future.
The only real way out is to delete your Facebook account. But even then, Facebook says it will take up to 90 days to remove all your data. It may take longer. Much longer. In any case, Meta doesn’t spell out what it does with your activity history.
What doesn’t work
You can turn off, sort of, the data Facebook and its partners share about you. But, even then, Facebook says: “We’ll still receive activity from whatever site. It may be used to measure and improve their ads, but it will be disconnected from your account.” (You can believe Facebook if you like, but I’m inclined to doubt it.)
Next, simply putting a post on your page that claims to be a legal notice forbidding Meta from using your personal data and photos won’t help you a bit. No, I don’t care who told you that this would work. It doesn’t. Never has, never will.
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So, what can you do? Well, first things first. Facebook has a bad habit of changing its menus. If the specific suggestions below don’t work for you, use the Facebook search function to find the settings you’re looking for.
Don’t share public posts – it’s dangerous
You should be careful about what you share in the first place. If you really don’t want people to know your favorite TV show is Happy Days, don’t post about Richie Cunningham and The Fonz. That’s a silly example, but I trust you get my point.
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Related to this, if you’re comfortable with, say, your friends knowing you won’t be going to Great-Uncle Jack’s fifth wedding but not the world at large, use the “Post audience” to restrict the people who can see your post to your friends or even more restricted groups, not the public.
Adjust your default privacy settings for posts
Indeed, unless you want everyone and anyone to see what you’re up to, you should set your Facebook postings to always be for friends only. To do this, take the following steps:
- Open the Facebook app or website.
- Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings.
- Navigate to Privacy Center.
- Go to Common Privacy Settings.
- Head to Manage Audience Settings.
- Find “Who can see your future posts?”
- Change this setting to “Friends.”
This ensures that all your future posts will be visible only to your friends by default.
Change the privacy of your existing public or friends-of-friends posts
What’s that? You got years’ worth of public posts that you’d rather not have public? Well, you can fix that too:
- In the Privacy settings, locate Limit Past Posts.
- Click on Limit Old Posts.
- Confirm your choice.
This action will change all your past public and friends-of-friends posts to be visible only to friends.
It’s not just Joe Random Snooper you need to worry about. Meta makes it easy for the company and its partners to use your information for anyone who uses its application programming interfaces (APIs), such as its Graph API, its Research Tools, and, of course, Facebook can use all your public data for AI at Meta.
What else can you do to get Meta out of your hair?
You can control what you post and who sees it, but controlling what other people post about you is much harder.
Take charge of who can tag you
One thing you can do, though, is take some control of the posts and images you’re tagged in. To do this, take the following steps:
- Click your profile picture in the top right of Facebook.
- Select Settings & Privacy, then click Settings.
- In the left column, click Profile and Tagging.
- Click next to Review posts you’re tagged in before the post appears on your profile? to turn this setting on or off.
This only controls, however, whether you allow their posts to show up on your profile.
You can (and should) also block users
To stop someone from tagging you at all, you need to block them using these steps:
- Switch to the profile that you want to use.
- Click your profile picture in the top right of Facebook.
- Select Settings & Privacy, then click Settings.
- In the left column, under Audience and Visibility, click Blocking.
- In the Block Users section, click Edit.
- Click Add to Blocked List.
- Type the name of the profile you want to block.
- Click Block next to their name.
- Click Confirm.
How to control your Facebook apps
Facebook apps, yes, even the FarmVille game you downloaded years ago, can spy on you. To control them and eliminate the ones you don’t use, head over to Facebook’s App Settings. Here, you can see the Facebook apps, games, and websites you’ve connected to your Facebook account. To control these, do the following:
- Click your profile picture in the top right of Facebook.
- Select Settings & Privacy, then click Settings.
- Click Apps and Websites in the left side menu.
- Scroll down to Preferences, then next to Apps, websites, and games, click Turn Off for each one.
Or, instead of cherry-picking and disabling Facebook apps, you can choose to completely disable the Facebook app platform. This means you won’t be able to use Facebook integrations on third-party apps or websites that access data through OAuth. This should cut down on the information you’ve been sharing with Meta.
How to manage your off-Facebook activity
You can also control how much of your information you’re sharing with Meta’s partners by going to the Off-Facebook Activity (OFA) page. To view this page, you may need to enter your Facebook password.
Once there, to see exactly what each one is up to in general terms, click on the ones you’re concerned about. Since you probably have hundreds of them, I doubt you’ll want to go through all of them.
However, to quote Meta, “We receive more details and activity than what appears here.”
Remember to turn off future activity
From the Manage Your Off-Facebook Activity page, toward the bottom of the display, you can Turn off Future Activity. Again, that doesn’t stop either Facebook or the company from getting your data; it just breaks, in theory, the connection between your Facebook identity and your data.
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You’re not done yet. Head back once more to Manage Your Off-Facebook Activity. There, click on More Options in the right-hand column. Once that’s done, toward the bottom of the column, you’ll see a link to Manage Future Activity. Click on it, and you’ll get another window with a button for, once again, Manage Future Activity.
From here, you get an option: “Your future off-Facebook activity saved with your account allows us to personalize your experience.” If you turn this off, you’ll more permanently break the connection between your account and everyone else. If you do this, you should know before doing this that you’ll no longer be able to use Facebook to log into third-party websites.
At the end of all this, Facebook and friends will still be spying on you, but at least they’ll be seeing through a dark glass instead of looking right at you.
The Meta-nuclear option
If you decide you want to get rid of Facebook once and for all, you can start by deactivating Facebook. This closes down your use of Facebook, but you can always come back to it. Unless you are absolutely sure you want to leave Facebook for good, I recommend deactivating it for a while to see if you’d miss it before deleting it forever.
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Delete or deactivate Facebook
You take the same steps to do either one. These are:
- Open the Facebook app or access Facebook through a web browser.
- Tap or click on your profile picture in the top right corner.
- Select Settings & Privacy, then click Settings.
- In the left menu, click on Your Facebook Information or Accounts Center.
- Select Personal Details under Account Settings.
- Click on Account Ownership and Control.
- Choose Deactivation or Deletion. If you deactivate it, you can always come back and bring it back again.
- Select the account or profile you want to delete.
- Click on Delete Account and then Continue.
- You may be asked to enter your password to confirm your identity.
- Optionally, you can select a reason for leaving Facebook.
- Review your options, which may include downloading your information. Click Delete Account to confirm. Your account will be scheduled for permanent deletion after a 30-day grace period. During the grace period, you can log back in to cancel the deletion if you change your mind.
This is the only way out of Facebook that will truly protect your privacy. I know that’s easier said than done, but it’s the only way to be sure. Even then, however, Meta will keep its eye on you.
Meta admits to keeping your data around for 90 days, but a recent security study found that Meta will keep all your data for 180 days. Still, it’s truly your only option if you’re fed up with Meta and want out. Good luck.