Facebook has announced that it’s teaming up with four of the world’s largest corporate data brokers to “enhance” the ad experience for users. Datalogix, Epsilon, Acxiom, and BlueKai obtain information gathered about users through online means (such as through cookies when users surf the web) as well as through offline means (such as through loyalty cards at supermarkets and product warranty cards)1.  Through the new relationship with Facebook, companies will be able to display advertisements to Facebook users based on data that these data brokers have on individuals.

In practical terms, this means that limiting how much information you put on Facebook is not enough to limit how ads are targeted to you on Facebook. Your interests, age, shopping history (including offline), web browsing, location, and much more could be stored by these data brokers and utilized to market to you – even if you’ve been careful not to share this type of information with Facebook.

So, what can users do? If you’re concerned about this practice, you can opt out of the targeted advertisements by individually visiting each of the data broker partners currently working with Facebook. We've got directions below for opting out of each site2.

We also have two general tips: continue reading at:  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/howto-opt-out-databrokers-sho...