How to stop Facebook from using your web history for ads

As part of bringing advertisements that will appeal more to your interests, Facebook is going to be collecting information from the apps that you use and websites you visit – yes, that means your entire web history will be used by Facebook. If you feel like this is somehow an intrusion to your privacy, scroll past the break to learn how you can stop it when it starts rolling out locally.

Image: Gizmodo

This feature doesn’t lessen the ads you see on your news feed, but it would somehow be “personalized”. For example if you’re on the lookout for a brand new smartphone and you’ve been browsing the web for discounts on phones, Facebook will use that and throw advertisements your way with the best deals for handsets. Pretty cool feature, really.

The thing is, all your visited sites are accessible by Facebook. We’re not saying that Facebook will use and do malicious things with it, but if you don’t feel too comfortable with them knowing all the sites you visit, here’s a 3-step method on how you can opt out from the feature using your computer:

1. Visit the Digital Advertising Allicance website. But before doing so, make sure you have your cookies enabled since the tool requires cookies.
2. Once there, go to the All Participating Companies tab where you’ll see a list and you can start looking for Facebook.
3. Tick the box beside to stop it from using your data and while you’re at it, you can also block other websites you frequently visit to do the same thing. After that, click the “Submit your choices” button and you’re back to safely browsing the Internet privately again.

For Facebook users who browse on mobile, you also have to manually fix your settings.

Android users:

Go to Google Settings>Ads>Opt Out of Interest-based Ads.

iPhone users:

Go to Settings>General>Restrictions>Advertising (under the “Privacy” section) and look for Limit Ad Tracking.

That’s it! In this world of hacking and having the need for privacy-centered smartphones, it somehow feels a bit safer when you know you’ve prevented at least one website to have access to your personal online data. Hope this helps!

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