When it comes to the targeted advertisement and its refinement, Meta-owned Facebook has always been under scrutiny for its data tracking practices. Time and again the name has been smudged with the accusations of privacy infringement. Now, the company has come up with a feature called as “Link History” on its mobile app in which it shall enable the users to opt out from sharing their browsing records with the platform. It was through a blog post that this feature was revealed by Facebook.
Users Can Deactivate Link History to Opt Out of Targeted Ads
Since, the Link History is activated on user devices, Facebook is able to maintain a log of all the clicked links in order to serve the users with more personalized ads. Now, the users are also empowered to opt out of the same.
That being said, why it should be saved and maintained is basically to keep a track of visited links which only helps the end users to visit the link again. If the user chooses the Link History to be shared, the company in turn can use the data for the sake of targeted advertisements.
As per the social media mammoth, the Link history contains a compilation of all the websites that are visited through FB mobile browser for a period of 30 days.
When the user allows the link history, the links accessed by the Facebook mobile browser (not the Messenger chats) are stored for 30 days and as per the privacy policy of Meta Technologies, the same are used to enhance the advertisements.
On the contrary, if the users choose to disable the Link History, Facebook commits to delete the same within 90 days. Notably, the feature’s global availability is gradual and not yet universal.
How to Disable Link History?
- Tap any link within the app
- In the bottom right, click on more actions.
- Select Browser Settings and switch off the option next to Allow History.
- Confirm by clicking on “Don’t Allow”.
Notably, disabling this would immediately erase the history and the previously visited links shall not be accessible and neither shall it be used for targeted advertisments.
Though now Facebook is enabling the users to opt out of sharing the history, it still opens the discussion over Facebook’s historical tracking practices.
How the latest feature goes and gets received by the end users is something that we have to wait and watch…
