New Year, New Facebook: Social Network Introduces More Privacy Tools

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Mark Zuckerberg may have eschewed his New Year’s resolution tradition, but Facebook is picking up where he left off.

The social network on Tuesday announced new privacy tools meant to give users more control over their personal data.

“One of our main goals for the next decade is to build much stronger privacy protections for everyone on Facebook,” Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post. “We know we have a lot of work to do here, which is why this is such a priority for our teams and for me personally.”

Review Your Privacy Settings

Facebook will start by prompting nearly 2 billion global users to review their privacy settings: A News Feed reminder will direct you to the recently updated Privacy Checkup tool.

“This makes it even easier to adjust who can see your posts and profile information, strengthen your account security by turning on login alerts, and review the information you share with apps you’ve logged in to with Facebook,” Zuckerberg said.

You don’t have to wait for the corporate nudge: On desktop, click the question mark icon (top right), then Privacy Checkup; via mobile, tap the menu (three lines in the bottom right) and scroll down to Privacy Shortcuts.

Facebook is encouraging people around the world to review their privacy settings (via Facebook)

Take Control of Off-Facebook Activity

Five months after introducing the Off-Facebook Activity function in select countries, the firm is rolling out its summary feature to everyone.

As per the digital food chain, businesses often share data about people’s interactions on their websites with ad platforms and other services. Most people, though, struggle to keep track of who has information about them and for what it is used.

Enter Off-Facebook Activity, which provides users with a rundown of the apps and sites that send data to the social media platform, and the ability to clear it from their account.

“Off-Facebook Activity marks a new level of transparency and control,” according to Zuckerberg. “We’ve been working on this for a while because we had to rebuild some of our systems to make this possible.”

What commitment.

To review your activity on desktop, click the arrow icon (top right) > Your Facebook Information > Off-Facebook Activity; on mobile visit the menu (bottom right) > Settings > Your Facebook Information > Off-Facebook Activity.

Alerts for Third-Party Logins

Plenty of other platforms—from games to streaming networks—let folks sign in using a Facebook account.

In an effort to help users track their activity (and any possible breaches), Facebook recently launched Login Notifications, which sends an alert every time your account is used to sign into third-party apps.

“You should be able to easily understand and manage your information, which is why strengthening your privacy controls is so important,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We’ll have more to share as we continue to make progress on this important work in the decade ahead.”

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