The world's largest social network, Facebook, has introduced new ways for users to block adverts on its site, but will not stop tracking users' external Web browsing habits.
Users have always had the option to use the Digital Advertising Alliance AdChoices program. The site has now introduced additional advertising controls on iOS and Android devices.
Facebook has been tracking its users' Web usage since 2010, through the use of 'like' buttons on other Web sites. The user needs to be logged onto Facebook when visiting these sites, but does not necessarily have to have the social network open.
"We are continuing to roll out online interest-based advertising and will now begin including information from pages that use Facebook's like button and similar social features, as we announced last year.
"We hope that the ads people see will continue to become more useful and relevant, and that this new control will make it easier for people to have the ads experience they want," Stephen Deadman, Facebook global deputy chief privacy officer, said in a blog post.
The blog post went into detail about how users have the option to opt out of having these adverts displayed on their pages. These features can be accessed in the settings option.
However, Rainey Reitman, activism director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the MIT Technology Review this was not enough.
"Promising not to use information is not the same as promising to actually delete the data," she says. "The 'like' data is especially problematic. Most people probably don't even realise that whenever they load a page with a 'like' button on it, Facebook gets a little information on them."
Since introduction of the like button on external Web sites, there have been Internet-privacy bodies opposing it.
In 2010, an open letter was sent to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The letter asked Facebook to not collect any information from users when visiting external sites, unless they click on the social plugin or like button on the Web site.
Facebook did not do this. It is not clear what the information collected will be used for, if not advertising.
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