At its F8 conference today, Facebook revealed details of an upcoming tool it is working on — Clear History. The tool will let Facebook users not only see which sites and apps gather information about usage, but also let users delete this information.
At its F8 conference today, Facebook revealed details of an upcoming tool it is working on — Clear History. The tool will let Facebook users not only see which sites and apps gather information about usage, but also let users delete this information.
The privacy-centric tool comes as the social network slowly comes to the realization « that people want more information about how Facebook works and the controls they have over their information ». The ability to delete browsing histories from Facebook appears to be a direct response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal in which private data was shared without consent.
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Ahead of the announcement at the conference, Mark Zuckerberg wrote about Clear History on his own Facebook page. He said: « Once we roll out this update, you’ll be able to see information about the apps and websites you’ve interacted with, and you’ll be able to clear this information from your account. You’ll even be able to turn off having this information stored with your account. » As you’ll probably have discerned from the working of this, it only applies to people with Facebook accounts, and will do nothing to protect the privacy of people without accounts but who are still tracked via Like buttons and so on.
Zuckerberg goes on to downplay the value of the tool, adding:
Writing about the new tool, Facebook vice president and chief privacy office, Erin Egan, explains:
She goes on to try to persuade Facebook users that the tool will go a long way to improving privacy:
It’s not clear just how long it will take Facebook to bring Clear History to all of its users, but the company will almost certainly be working to get it out the door as quickly as possible in the face of increasing criticism and scrutiny of its privacy policies.
Image credit: Jonathan Weiss / Shutterstock
