Protecting people’s information is central to Facebook’s vision of being a privacy-focused communications platform. It is fundamental to how the platform’s business works, and it is everyone’s responsibility at Facebook.
Facebook’s Privacy Approach
Facebook gives people control of their privacy, and is committed to giving people more control over their privacy choices. That is why the company has built tools to give people more transparency and control over how their data is used, including:
• Privacy Checkup: Through the Privacy Checkup, people can control who can see what they share, take steps to keep their account secure, control how people can find them on Facebook, and manage their data settings.
• Privacy Shortcuts: This is a place to more easily access privacy, security, and ads controls, as well as Your Facebook information. It has clearer explanations of how these tools and Facebook services work, and quick access to the corresponding controls.
• Manage Activity: The Manage Activity tool allows people to view and manage their posts in bulk, making it easier to curate their presence on Facebook.
• Audience Selector Tool: This lets people control who will see a post they share on Facebook.
• Who can look me up?: Controls whether people are able to search for you on Facebook using your email address or phone number.
Facebook helps people understand its data practices. While its Data Policy describes their practices in detail, Facebook goes beyond this to give people more information and controls in the products, including over the ads they see. That is why Facebook believes that personalised advertising and privacy are not at odds. Just some of the tools include:
• Ad Preferences: Lets people view, add, and remove preferences created for them based on things like their profile information, actions they take on Facebook, and websites and apps they use off Facebook.
• Off-Facebook Activity: Facebook has created a tool so people can see a summary of the information businesses send to the platform about their activity on other apps and websites and disconnect it from their account if they choose.
• Why am I Seeing This Ad?: People can click on any ad, learn why they are seeing it, and adjust their settings.
• Why am I Seeing This Post?: People can click on any post to help them better understand and more easily control what they see from friends, Pages, and Groups in their News Feed.
Facebook designs privacy into its products from the outset. The company designs privacy controls into Facebook products with guidance from experts in areas like data protection and privacy law, security, interface design, engineering, product management, and public policy.
The platform’s privacy team works to build these perspectives into every stage of product development.
Privacy on Facebook in the EMEA region: Fact Sheet
Facebook works hard to keep people’s information secure, and also works around the clock to help protect people’s accounts. The platform builds security into our products, including through the following:
• Security Checkup: People can use Facebook’s Security Checkup to review and add more security to their account.
• How we combat scraping: Facebook devotes substantial resources to combating unauthorised scraping on its products.
• Two-Factor Authentication: The platform gives people this option in addition to your password to help protect your account from unauthorised access.
• End-to-End Encryption: Facebook built end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp and offers the option in Messenger to ensure messages remain private.
• More Accountability for Third-Party Apps: Facebook has made a number of improvements to ensure developers have the tools and information they need to continue to use the platform responsibly.
People can choose to delete or transfer information
To give people more control and choice over their data, we give people tools for deleting anything they’ve posted or transferring data to other services.
• Download Your Information: Facebook has built tools that help people access and download their data.
• Data Portability: Facebook believes that part of having a free and open internet means that people should be able to transfer their data to other apps and services they use. So we’ve built tools to make it easier for people to take information to another service.
Facebook are accountable
In addition to privacy reviews, Facebook has put products through rigorous data security testing. It also meets with regulators, legislators, and privacy experts around the world to get input on its data practices and policies.
• Governance Framework: Learn about how its privacy programme fosters accountability for privacy at every level of the company.
Improvement is constant
While Facebook has made significant investments over the past two years, the platform will continue to refine its practices and improve its tools, as expectations change and technology advances.
