With users losing trust in Facebook and organisations pulling off their ads from the social network, the company is in a deep mess. In a bid to gain back the trust and to give users more control over their privacy, the social media company has updated its privacy settings to make data management easier for users.
The new privacy settings have a redesigned settings menu with a lot of new options. The recent Cambridge Analytica scandal has revealed how Facebook has misused personal information of millions of users and how Facebook may potentially misuse user data in the future.
Centralized Privacy Settings
The company is rolling out a more centralized system for its privacy policy where users now will be able to control their privacy and security settings according to their requirements.
The new privacy update will be rolled out to all the users globally in a few weeks. With the new system, it will allow the users on Facebook to alter and change privacy and security settings in one place. The centralized page cover around 20 separate sections across the social media platform.
Users can now control the settings and private information in a more easy manner like political preferences, social interests and can download to review a file of data the social media have collected. The company will also clarify the terms of use and what types of apps users have currently connected to Facebook. This will also include a list of apps users have given permissions to get access to their information.
User Details Won’t Be Shared With Advertisers
Recently Facebook has halted its target advertising practice which was used by advertisers to target ads based on user information from the third-party data brokers. The data brokers primarily collected a wide range of user information about the individual consumers. The data includes personal information like buying habits, last purchases, interests, wallets you use, what products you like on Facebook and more.
Facebook earlier allowed the third-party brokers to get access to user data and advertisers to use personal information of users to help serve targeted ads to users through third-party data providers.
There will be a privacy shortcuts menu as well where users can now control data with a few taps, with better navigation. There will be additional security options like two-factor authentication and options to manage user data accessed by Facebook advertisers with other features like adjusting who can see your posts and other private data in the profiles.
Facebook is also reworking the terms of service and data collection practices.
Indian Government Summons Facebook Over Data Privacy
The Indian government has asked Facebook to produce all the details regarding data breach by the first week of April. The Indian government has demanded a clarification from Facebook whether the company or any of the third-party data brokers have or had any access to user data which had been engaged in the manipulation of votes.
The Ministry of Electronics and IT is taking proactive measures beforehand to make sure the user data is secure and is not misused by any third-party broker. Recently, the Indian National Congress was found to be one of the clients of Cambridge Analytica, and the government now wants to know whether any user data of the voters in India was compromised by Cambridge Analytica or any other entity.