Jeff Chiu / AP
Facebook is giving its privacy tools a makeover as it reels from criticisms over its data practices and faces tighter European regulations in the coming months. Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
Facebook says it is shutting down a type of advertising product that allowed marketers to use data from people’s lives outside of Facebook to target them on the platform.
The information includes categories like home ownership and purchase history and is collected by some of the world’s largest data brokers such as Acxiom, Epsilon and Experian.
Facebook’s product marketing director Graham Mudd said in a statement that shutting down the feature over the next six months “will help improve people’s privacy on Facebook.”
The program allowed specific targeting of audiences using offline data about them in the U.S., Brazil, France, Germany, the U.K., Australia and Japan.
