Facebook users beware: The company has officially declared that it will be tracking your online consumption and behaviour on Facebook, and off Facebook too. Like Google, Facebook wants to leverage its understanding of your user behaviour to serve you more targeted ads.
Facebook has been using your likes and posts on Facebook to target ads to you already. Now, though, Facebook will track you across any website you visit, as long as the site has a ‘like’ button, a Facebook login, or any Facebook code. And Facebook will track your reading habits, even if you don’t login via Facebook or click on ‘like’ button on the site.
You may not be aware of this, but Facebook has managed this via an automatic-opt-in feature — albeit one which you can opt out of. However, activists and analysts point out that companies like Facebook, Google etc should only be allowed to use your data by turning it on through your explicit permission (manual opt-in instead of automatic opt-in) — and not by having to turn it off through an opt-out.
For advertisers, Facebook is aiming to build a bank of data to help target advertising better. The raw data is processed by big data brokers like Acxiom and Datalogix to develop profiles of users, which are then made available to advertisers.
Suppose you regularly surf sites that discuss fashion and accessories. You will be profiled as a fashion geek, and advertisers interested in fashion geeks will be able to serve ads to you on Facebook.
This can be big business for Facebook. Google earned as much as $13 billion off of data-based targeting. Facebook is looking to take a larger piece of this growing market.
For consumers, this is the hidden cost of Facebook: your data. Facebook doesn’t charge users because it makes money by selling access to demographics of users. This often results in advertising that seems to “follow you around,” which can feel intrusive.
The major issue is that users are not asked if they consent to being tracked, ie, there is an automatic opt-in process, instead of this being a manual opt-in process where users can choose to allow this to happen or not. Instead, all that Facebook gives users, is the option to ‘opt-out’ —but the problem is that experts know that less than 2% of users actively go through the opt-out process.
Regulators worldwide are starting to take action. The European Commission for the Digital Agenda is overseeing new rules that will govern privacy policies, and is evaluating a mandatory opt-in requirement for consumers to be tracked. Other countries are working on methods so as not to allow internet companies to track users’ behaviour on third party sites.
