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Have you ever suspected that Facebook is listening to you? Then get ready for something even scarier.
Facebook is giving us a new way to see just how much it knows about us. The social network has made a tool called “Off-Facebook Activity” available to its 2 billion members. The tool shows that Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger apps do not need a microphone to target you with frighteningly accurate ads and posts – they are tracking you in countless other ways.
Even when Facebook is closed on your phone, the social network is notified when we use other apps that have the pixel (Facebook’s tracker) installed. It also knows when we read articles with political leanings, what content we consume, and even which recipes we have recently accessed. It knows you want to stop eating meat before your mother does! And it knows when we click on the shopping cart of almost every online store. Facebook uses all this information about our lives to determine which messages and marketing will be delivered to you by companies and politicians.
You can see how Facebook is stalking you across the internet. The “Off-Facebook Activity” tracker will show 180 days’ worth of data that Facebook collects about you. This page, hidden behind many settings menus (here is a direct link), is the result of a promise that CEO Mark Zuckerberg made during the height of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 to provide ways to “clear history” on our accounts and thus avoid tracking.
Facebook’s new tool is not like a “clear history” button in your browser, but, along with transparency, it offers a way to disconnect part of its surveillance from your Facebook account.
You may be shocked or at least a little embarrassed by what you find there, but the big truth is that this tool changes nothing for you; it simply shows how closely we are watched and monitored. In fact, we at Check Commerce and very likely your digital business are benefiting from the data collected by Facebook to create more effective campaigns.
