Facebook’s handling of user data had undergone a lot of scrutinity and Mark Zuckerberg has promised to take necessary steps to win back trust from its users. Ahead of Facebook’s F8 conference, Mark has announced a new option that would allow users to clear their tracks on its platform. This is probably the biggest privacy control yet from Facebook.
Drawing similarities to a web browser’s “Clear History” function, a new Facebook “Clear History” feature will give you the control to clear your browsing history. This includes what you’ve clicked on as well as websites you’ve visited.
On top of that, you will get to see which websites and apps that send information to Facebook and you can choose to clear this entirely from your account. If you do not want Facebook to track anything at all, there will also be a permanent off switch which disables storing of such information on your Facebook account.
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Just like websites and cookies, the information collected such as what you’ve liked and websites visited will allow Facebook to provide you with a better experience. Mark Zuckerberg has warned that clearing your history may potentially make your Facebook experience worse as it will need to relearn your preferences. You may even need to sign in to every website that you’ve previously logged in with Facebook.
When a user clears their history or use a new setting, Facebook can provide apps and websites aggregated analytics such as age and gender of their users. This is still possible without giving away specific data associated to your account.
On the official blog posted by Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer, the new Clear History feature will take months to build and they will work closely with privacy advocates, academics, policymakers and regulators to get input on their approach. This include how they are going to remove identifying information and also what happens when they require more information for security purposes.
