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Starting January 1, 2015, Facebook is going to update its current privacy policy. Users will have a new tool – “Privacy Basics”– that will help them take control of what they share and whom they share. On Monday, the new tool was introduced by Facebook’s Global chief privacy officer, Erin Egan, in a long e-mail sent to all Facebook users.

Privacy Basis helps users better understand who can see their updates (links, images etc) and how to do change basic account settings, such as removing name when somebody has been playing with the Tag Photo button.

Another important update from Facebook is a better control over the type of ads users are interested in. Currently, if somebody chooses what adds not to see on Facebook using his/her computer, he/she will still see them on a smartphone or tablet Facebook version. With the new versions, Facebook will remember new ad setting regardless the device its users have.

In its e-mail, Facebook announces that members will get more tips and guides on how to use their accounts and a new set of terms, data and cookies policy that will be easier to understand. Facebook will also grant members an “expanded” control over the ads they see when using sites and apps through this platform.

“We hope these updates improve your experience. Protecting people’s information and providing meaningful privacy controls are at the core of everything we do”,

Erin Egan added in the e-mail.

Privacy Basics will provide easy to understand guides on how users can control their personal data on Facebook by untagging, choosing who will see a particular post, and blocking unwanted viewers. The guides will be available in 36 languages.

Bloggers were unimpressed by Facebook’s updates. Some of them said that Facebook wasn’t changing anything in their privacy policy, but rewriting it so “humans can understand it”. Others said the privacy policy was more clear but still complicated. Under “Updating our terms and policies” section, Facebook clearly states that nothing in their privacy policy is changing with January updates.

Facebook plans some other minor updates that will improve customer experience.

Users will get to know what’s going on around them in a particular location – who are their nearby friends, what are nearby friends doing, what type of menus nearby restaurants have etc.

In the near future, Facebook users will also have a “Buy Button” to help them buy stuff without leaving Facebook. Additionally, if somebody loses their Instagram account password, they will be able to recover it using the Facebook account.

About the ads policy, Facebook clearly states that nothing would change with the updates. Facebook will continue to help advertisers reach people with relevant ads without revealing people’s identity as usual.

Facebook decided recently it wanted us to have a better control over the ads we see and are bombarded with. But, they will track our on and off – site behaviors in order to learn our web browsing habits.

In other words, they will soon introduce cookies to “teach” them what we do outside our social network and an ads preference tool to select, block or encourage the ads we receive.

Like anybody has the time to actually swipe through Facebook ads and treat each one individually. But let’s see how the official announcement sounds:

When we ask people about our ads, one of the top things they tell us is that they want to see ads that are more relevant to their interests. Today, we learn about your interests primarily from the things you do on Facebook, such as Pages you like. Starting soon in the US, we will also include information from some of the websites and apps you use. This is a type of interest-based advertising, and many companies already do this. People also tell us they want more control over the ads they see. That’s why we’re introducing ad preferences, a new tool accessible from every ad on Facebook that explains why you’re seeing a specific ad and lets you add and remove interests that we use to show you ads. So if you’re not interested in electronics, you can remove electronics from your ad interests.

In translation, this means that Facebook aligns its policies to the ones already implemented by other tech giants such as Google or Microsoft to name a few. But the biggest problem related to the Facebook cookies and ads preference tools is that somehow Facebook ignores those people who don’t want to see ads at all.

A second issue is that nobody actually has the time to go to each ad, understand why it is shown to them, block it or select the option “This ad is useful”. Who in their right mind will go through all these steps to select ads based on their topic in order to tell Facebook not to send them their way ever again?

Companies keeping following and tracking our activity on the web raised a lot of concerns in the last year, as there are privacy issues and consumer protection details that are not dealt with the right way. Now that we will have Facebook cookies and ads preference tools, it seems that we will have even more ads coming our way, ads that will be even more targeted than before and more aggressive.

The regular Facebook users will ignore them, just as they did so far, while the ambitious ones, powered by a personal vendetta against advertisement in general, will take their time to block some ads. However, there’s an upside to this. Cynthia Boris from the Marketing Pilgrim makes a wise observation:

Bottom line for advertisers, if a Facebook user goes through all these steps to block your ad, they weren’t going to buy from you in the first place, so blocking saves you time and money. Looking at it that way, the new ad preference tool really does make ads better for everyone.

Facebook let us know it would implement the Facebook cookies and the ads preference tools in the next few weeks in the U.S., going globally in the immediate future. Let’s see how things evolve, shall we?

Facebook Changes Privacy Policies on January, 1

Facebook Cookies and Ads Preference Tools To Roll Out in the U.S

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