Facebook is a real spy, now everyone has really understood it, so much so that there are numerous protests around the world by influential personalities and even national governments.Facebook makes money not only with advertising but also with the collection of personal data and the profiling of users who can sell to external companies.Going on the practical, it can be noticed, both on the right side of the home page, and in the middle of the various news published by the friends, its advertising made of pages and posts on which it is recommended to do “Like”.
It will be noted that this advertising is personalized for each user, in the sense that the recommended pages and the announcements concern things that are supposed to interest us.
How does Facebook know what interests us?
The answer is that Facebook knows all our preferences based on what we publish, based on what we like based on the information that is extracted from the various applications and also based on the history of the websites visited.
Thanks to the ability to know which sites were visited by us, reading the history in the browser, Facebook, as well as other companies, is able to show us ads that may be of interest to us.
Facebook uses this data so advertisers can know what kind of products interest us.
So if you were looking for a pair of shoes or a computer, you will see announcements regarding these two things.
Who wanted to prevent Facebook from looking at the history of the sites visited you can do it using some tools or changing options both on the computer and on Android or iPhone smartphones.
READ ALSO: Prevent Facebook from transferring data to external companies and applications
The easiest way to prevent this ability of Facebook to watch what sites we visit is using Firefox with the extension of Mozilla’s Facebook Container.
This extension opens the Facebook site in a separate container, as in a sandbox, so as to remain separate from the other sites visited.
After installing this extension, Facebook’s cookies are deleted and the Facebook account is disconnected.
By reopening the Facebook site, it opens in a new blue tab (also known as the “container tab”), which prevents Facebook from reading the Firefox history and the stored cookies and tracking the activity through third-party cookies.
Also, since Facebook is logged into the Container tab, the built-in Facebook comments and Like buttons on websites won’t work.
Another way to exclude Facebook from the web browser history is on the site Digital Advertising Alliance.
From this portal, it is possible to download cookies (see what cookies are) that tell advertising sites not to look at our history.
From the list, it will be necessary to find Facebook, put across and then click on the button submit.
To learn more about Facebook advertising, there is an information page on personalized ads.
On this page, you can make sure that Facebook advertising is not personalized based on the sites which we have visited previously.
To do this, click Listing settings and put on NO to all the options present.
This will protect part of your privacy from Facebook on the PC browser which, of course, is not enough.
We must also stop tracking on Facebook on your smartphone or tablet.
On iPhone and iPad must be opened settings> general and find the section of the privacy.
From that option, you will find a switch to stop the advertisements
On Android smartphones and tablets instead, you have to open the application Google settings, find ads and check the box that says “disable interest-based ads“.
Other ways of blocking Facebook are the extensions to avoid being tracked online by the sites blocking the collection of personal data and the methods to block the saving of the sites visited in the browser history.
It is understood that these options probably do not protect us from all the data collection practices of Facebook since they live for this and use techniques they do not talk about and are unknown to us.
At the very least, however, those who care about privacy can prevent Facebook from looking at its chronology of sites that is not cheap.
READ ALSO: Facebook privacy management: basic rules and control page