Given Meta’s turbulent past, the company are now looking to provide more transparency over how they utilise user data, as well as what users can do to control such. This will all be controlled via a new Privacy Center tool.
Let’s take a look at what you can expect from Facebook’s new Privacy Center tool.
What is Facebook’s Privacy Center?
Facebook’s new Privacy Center is a tool that provides a comprehensive overview of its various usage tracking aspects. The new Privacy Center will include five specific elements that outline the data Meta collects in each. The Facebook Privacy Center will also give information on how users can switch data tracking off for the various elements.
The five elements are:
- Security – You can brush up on account security, set up tools like two-factor authentication or learn more about how Meta fights data scraping.
- Sharing – You can visit this guide if you have questions about who sees what you post, or how you can clean up old posts on your profile using tools like Manage Activity.
- Collection – Learn about the different types of data that Meta collects, and how you can view that data through tools like Access Your Information.
- Use – Learn more about how and why we use data, and explore the controls we offer to manage how your information is used.
- Ads – Learn more about how your information is used to determine the ads you see, and make use of ad controls like Ad Preferences.
As great as it is having this Privacy Center, this information has been accessible via other means in the past, so why create a whole tool to access this information?
Last week, the data protection watchdog in France, CNIL, announced that it issued a $60M fine to Facebook for breaching law in relation to cookie tracking. This follows investigations into how Facebook presents data tracking choices to users.
However, Facebook was not alone on this; Google and YouTube were also penalised.
As said by CNIL:
“CNIL has noted, following investigations, that the websites facebook.com, google.fr and youtube.com offer a button allowing the user to immediately accept cookies. However, they do not provide an equivalent solution (button or other) enabling the Internet user to easily refuse the deposit of these cookies. Several clicks are required to refuse all cookies, against a single one to accept them.”
The new Privacy Center was designed to better align with certain requirements and provide more clearer transparency over every aspect of Facebook’s tracking processes, combined with controls to ’empower’ users to turn off any tracking element as they see fit.
At the end of the day, the effectiveness of such boils down to how well people use it.
For those who are looking to find the new Privacy Center link, it can be found in the ‘Settings and Privacy’ element.
