Understanding Facebook privacy settings: part four

We’ve reached the last and final post in our blog series on Understanding Facebook Privacy Settings. So far we’ve covered general privacy, Timeline and tagging and applications. So, what’s left?

Ads

Your privacy settings also encompass advertisements and how your settings affect what you see while using Facebook. The Ads section of Facebook shows the compiled information about your interests (based on your Liked pages, for example) or advertisements you’ve clicked on or connected with in some way already on Facebook. It’s split into the following sections:

Your Interests

Your interests are compiled and listed by category (i.e. Business and Industry, News and Entertainment, Technology, etc.) based on interactions you’ve had with pages, apps, ads and more on Facebook. If at any time you don’t want a specific entry listed, you can go to the labeled picture and hit the “X” button on that entry. These entries are examples of the types of ad categories you might see on Facebook.

Advertisers You’ve Interacted With

This section, similar to the above, lists any services or products you’ve interacted with via their advertisements. You can click the “X” on any featured entry to remove it from the list like in the Your Interests section if you feel these products or service no longer apply to you.

Your Information

This area specifies what kind of information is used from your profile to generate ads directed at you, as well as what you’re choosing to share. Your Categories features a list of general fields that you may fall under for potential advertisers to market to you, such as “Birthday in (insert month here),” Administrative Services or Facebook access (browser): Chrome. You can click the “X” next to the respective label to remove these categories.

Ad Settings

Ad Settings is split into three fields that determine how and what type of ads you see. In “Ads based on your use of websites and apps” you can select on or off. Turning this setting off means that Facebook will still generate ads no matter what, but the ads you see will be more general and not customized to your online activity.

In “Ads on apps and websites off of the Facebook Companies”, you can also select whether you’d like this setting on or off. Switching this off also makes ads more general via opting out of letting Facebook determine relevant ads based on website/app advertisers that don’t originate from Facebook but are from its Audience Network. Again, you will still see ads by opting out, but they will be based on more general categories such as gender, rather than by interests, for example.

Lastly, in “Ads with your social actions”, you can set your preference to “Only my friends” or “No one”. Ads with social actions is another way of saying that you are letting friends view what ads, pages, or companies you like and it will show the ad with your ‘Like’ above it in a friend’s news feed.

Hide Ad Topics (test)

This field shows general ad topics that might generate ads in your news feed or elsewhere on Facebook. You can choose to hide a topic for six months, a year or hide permanently to avoid seeing ads based on the listed topic(s). You also have the option of suggesting more topics if you’d like to see other targeted ads in your feed.

The Overview

Another great practice for protecting your privacy would be to do a regular sweep of apps you are no longer using, as well as the removal of interests that don’t apply to you, or ones that you don’t want shared with advertisers. Limiting what data is collected about you helps protect your information and keep your account secure while providing peace-of-mind by knowing exactly what kind of information you’re sharing with Friends or otherwise.

Have more questions about ways you can protect your privacy on Facebook or online as a whole? Join us for one of our Secure360 conferences or contact us.