Facebook has given its feature for downloading account data, dubbed “Access Your Information”, a fresh new coat of paint whilst adding several new capabilities, including seeing how the social network has used your information to personalize your experience.
We’re also adding information about how your data may be used to personalize your experience on Facebook. For example, you might see that your primary location was one of multiple signals that informed a recent ad you saw for a food delivery app. This information is already available in our ‘Why Am I Seeing This tool’, but we wanted to make it easier for people to discover.
You’ll recall that Facebook has been complaining publicly in the past couple of weeks about Apple’s anti-tracking measures in iOS 14. The company even went so far as to craft a whole website claiming that iOS 14’s ad-tracking feature and the App Store’s new privacy labels are robbing small businesses of much-needed revenue in these times of hardship.
“Access Your Information” now also supports searching for data categories, like “location”.
And last but not least, the “Your Information” and “Information About You” categories were too broad so Facebook has decided to split them into the following categories (each broken down further into subcategories to make it easier to sift through):
- Your activity across Facebook
- Friends and followers
- Preferences
- Personal information
- Logged information
- Ads information
- Apps and websites off of Facebook
- Security and login information
To access the tool in the mobile app, touch the three-line menu button and choose Settings & Privacy near the bottom of the menu, then select Settings → Your Facebook Information. According to the company, the revamped tool will be available on other platforms “soon”.