Minimize Facebook Tracking
Not ready to give up on Facebook yet? We’re not judging. Just remember that every “like” and “share” on a Facebook page is giving away information on you. Here’re some things you can do to keep Facebook’s tracking to a minimum.
1. REMOVE AD PREFERENCES
Click on Settings, and then click the Ads link near the bottom of the list. This brings you to a page titled “Your ad preferences.” You’ll find five expandable banners, with settings that affect the way Facebook sends you ads.
• There’s a whole range of categories under this section ranging from People to Sports and Outdoors to Food and Drink. Be sure to go through each section, mouse over the interest and click to remove.
• Next, move to Advertisers you’ve interacted with and remove every company you don’t wish to receive ads.
• From there, move on to Your Information and turn o all the various categories listed in About you and Your categories.
• Then, go to Ad settings. Change the settings to “O ”, “No”, and “No One”, then move on to Hide ad topics.
2. ADJUST YOUR APP SETTINGS
We’ve covered this in the section for deleting Facebook, but it’s important to go through this list of apps even if you’re staying. That’s because every app collects di erent bits of information about you. Uncheck unnecessary things like “Friend list”, “Relationships”, “Work history” etc., then click save.
3. BLOCK THIRD-PARTY COOKIES
For Chrome, go to Settings, Advanced, Content settings, Cookies. This is where you block individual sites from adding cookies. Click add, type “facebook. com” and click add again to block cookies from Facebook.
For Firefox, click the gear icon to access settings and look for Privacy and Security. Choose Never remember history. Then, scroll down to the section Tracking Protection. Under Use Tracking Protection, select “Always”. And do the same for Send websites a “Do Not Track” signal that you don’t want to be tracked.
Mozilla also has a browser extension called the “Facebook container.” It lets you isolate Facebook activity so it’s not shared with external sites. Do note that this doesn’t work if you use your Facebook account to log in to an external website.
4. USE A DIFFERENT BROWSER
For added security, you can also consider using a di erent browser completely. We’d recommend looking up Epic Privacy Browser and Tor as these focus on privacy. Tor bounces your communications through a network of servers around the world, so no one can trace what you’re surng.