x
Breaking News
More () »

Don't ignore this alert from Facebook. It's your chance to quickly curb what it knows

You'll soon see prompts on Facebook reminding you of your privacy options. The worst thing you could do would be to tap or click the confirm boxes.
Credit: MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP/Getty Images
An illustration picture taken through a magnifying glass on March 28, 2018 in Moscow shows the icon for the social networking app Facebook on a smart phone screen.

Sometime soon, Facebook will get in the way of using Facebook for a minute or two. The social network will present a series of dialogs to U.S. users to remind them of their privacy options and give them a chance to change them.

The move, announced in a blog post Thursday morning, constitutes one of Facebook’s attempts to comply with the European Union’s sweeping General Data Protection Regulation. It also represents the Menlo Park, Calif., firm’s latest attempt to regain users’ trust after months of revelations about Facebook’s failures to protect their data from such third parties as the now-shuttered marketing firm Cambridge Analytica.

As such, the worst thing you could do with these prompts would be to tap or click their big blue “Confirm” boxes. Instead, you should take up Facebook on its invitation to constrain its use of your data.

The first three screens cover the profile information you’ve given to Facebook, how it attempts to match ads to your perceived interests, and its use of facial-recognition software. A “Manage Data Settings” button below each allows you to adjust those options. A fourth covers its terms of service.

The profile-information part represents your shot at being a little more mysterious by removing data you’ve provided—for example, maybe you no longer want to advertise your political leanings on Facebook. Pay particular information to such profile data points as your hometown that could be used to answer security questions for accounts at other sites.

The advertising-data portion of this exercise provides a chance to stop Facebook from using data from third parties in advertisements, which often results in ads tied to a recent or pending purchase follow you around, a practice marketers call “retargeting.”

The facial-recognition screen next lets you veto Facebook’s use of software to find you in images other people post—a technology that it’s begun to deploy more widely. Facebook says it uses this system both to tip you off when friends have posted photos of you without tagging you in them, and to spot fake accounts that lift real people’s photos.

But the facial-recognition setting is a binary, yes-or-no choice, with no intermediate option to allow only security-related uses of your “faceprint.”

Finally, this dialog allows you a chance to skim over Facebook’s terms of service. We will not be surprised if 99% of users skip right to the “I Agree” button at the bottom of that page.

The idea behind this interface is to remind users of settings that otherwise hide in different parts of Facebook’s privacy interface—and which require navigating different paths to reach depending on whether you visit Facebook in a Web browser or in its mobile apps.

Finished? Then do this

But this new feature leaves out one other part of Facebook that’s worth visiting: the Ad Preferences screen in which you can inspect and edit the interests that Facebook has discerned from your usage and which advertisers can target.

To visit that, go to facebook.com/ads/preferences in a browser or go to your settings in its mobile apps (on an iPhone, tap the three-row icon at the bottom right, tap Settings, then Account Settings; in Android, tap the three-row icon at the top right, tap Settings & Privacy, then Account Settings) and tap “Ads.”

This will also reveal which advertisers used their own marketing data to reach you on Facebook. But while you can hide their ads, you’re on your own when it comes to getting out of their customer databases.

Before You Leave, Check This Out