Controlling what information you provide to social media sites has always been a challenge. It’s no secret that Facebook uses your activity to target ads. Each time you like or share a post, you are providing Facebook, and their advertisers, just a little bit of information about you. Taken as a whole, this information is used to target ads into your feed.
It’s just gotten a bit easier to control what information you share with Facebook advertisers. Facebook has added a tool in the Settings tab to allow you to opt out of sharing your interests with Facebook advertisers. If you opt out, the behavioral data Facebook gathers will no longer be used for ads run on Facebook, Instagram and it’s mobile in-app ad network.
Back in June of 2014, Facebook notified users it would use behavioral data to target ads to users. However, they haven’t really started to implement that policy as of yet. In the next month, there will be a big push to use the behavioral data to target ads to their users.
The new opt out setting is improved over the precious opt out options. Previously, opting out was done through a third party vendor, Digital Advertising Alliance. However, this option required users to opt out on every device they used to access Facebook. With the new Facebook based opt out, preferences are set inside Facebook and are tied to the account not the device.
To control your Facebook ad settings, follow these steps:
1. Go to Settings
2. Choose Ads on left side
3. Click Edit next to “Ads base on my use of websites and apps”
4. Change to Off
