Facebook has recently updated its policies as it concerns collection of data on the over 2 billion monthly users on the social network; which remains the largest social network on the planet.
The new policy released on April 19 spelt out more clearly how the company collects and uses the information entrusted to it by its massive userbase, which changes was necessitated by the recent privacy issues surrounding the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and perhaps also the issue of data grabbing by third-party authentication services.
Albeit, Facebook's privacy policy was last updated in 2016, the full text of the new data policy at more than 4,200 words, is written in a simple language meant to be easy to understand.
Facebook database of users information is indeed huge, and the company has what is more or less a listing of what it thinks your political views looks like, which views it arrives at through the information from your photos, videos and thoughts you post on your timeline.
Also it extract some other data from your interactions with friends on the network, as well as pages and posts you "like" or follow.
The company placed some limit to the kind of data third-party apps can collect on its users, years before the news of Cambridge Analytica scandal broke out. And the new policy posted to its website reveals that Facebook is poised to limit this access even further.
While Facebook will restrict developers' access to your data or have it expressly revoked if you haven't used their app in three months, some data collection from your friends' apps still continues.
And to totally shut down the data collection, you'd have to give up using the apps altogether on your Facebook account. If you actually delete your account (quite distinct from account deactivation), Facebook will delete your information, including: posts, photos and status updates, but it excuses the data collected from sources other than yourself.
That is to say everything Facebook knows about you through your friends, from other data sources and websites you visit, is kept indefinitely as long as the social network deems fit.
Therefore, the only option left to you now is to adjust your privacy settings to change how much of your data is made public and what you can share with third-party apps.
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