#online tracking

This tutorial will guide you through the steps to not only “clear” the off-Facebook activity already linked with your account, but also to prevent future activity from being associated with your account going forward. Note that this won’t stop third parties from sending Facebook information about you—it will only stop Facebook from associating that information with your account.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/30/opinion/privacy-targeted-advertising.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_ty_20190430&nl=opinion-today&nl_art=0&nlid=63889185emc%3Dedit_ty_20190430&ref=headline&te=1

Lee Rainie NAILS IT - America, this is you...

“Americans, being Americans, say that it matters, but they behave in a way that doesn’t indicate that it matters.",  Lee Rainie - PEW director

Sadder facts:

If a user doesn’t provide interests or affiliations, Facebook will ASSIGN them one. The accuracy is between 60-70%. What’s the algorithm?

Some Facebook users will actually update their interests if Facebook screws up #FACEPALM

Facebook keeps a running list of things it has learned about you for advertisers. At this point, the list isn’t incredibly hard to find: Go to your account settings, click on “ads,” and the list will appear, ready for you to peruse or modify as you see fit.

Checkout the Washington Post list.

These lists have been public for a while. In preelection 2016, The Washington Post compiled a list of 98 categories that Facebook might use to build a portrait of you for advertisers. 

Once they had a chance to view this list, a slim majority — 51 percent — were not comfortable with Facebook collecting this information about them, according to the report, which was released Wednesday.

The survey was conducted in 2018, several months after Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica for improperly collecting data from Facebook users, a revelation that caused a major crisis of trust for the platform. The news was the catalyst for congressional hearings and an attempt to encourage users to quit Facebook. The company also announced that it would provide more information to users about how ads work on Facebook.

“We consistently find that there’s a paradox at the center of generalized privacy research,” said Lee Rainie, director of Internet and technology research at Pew.

Read the article for further details about what is assigned and the accuracy.

— About half (51 percent) of Facebook users are assigned a political label by Facebook.

Trying to opt out of ad tracking. This is what an industry regulating itself with no oversight looks like in action.

I did this 3 times. On different days. I also did it once over a year ago. Always got 0-5 successful opt-out requests and about 130 that ‘can’t be completed right now lol try again later’