It should become clearer for Facebook users what kind of personal information the social network collects about them. The company has therefore redesigned the settings menu of its mobile app. According to Facebook it has merged 20 different setting into a single menu.
The change is only aesthetically, all settings were already available, but harder to find, according to the company. The changes are timed just when the social network is under fire for alleged privacy violations. Earlier this month it became known that the British company Cambridge Analytica collected data about 50 million American Facebook users in 2014 without their consent.
This week several users found out that Facebook tracked with whom, and for how long, they made phone calls. The data was only collected when users opted-in to a specific setting but again the social network was negatively in the news for its handling of privacy sensitive user data.
The release of the new menu, appears to be an attempt of the company to demonstrate to its users it does take their privacy serious. Despite the fact that the social network claims it has been working on the new menu for some time already, the timing is likely no coincidence.
The platform states it has lately been criticized because its settings concerning privacy, security and advertisements were hard to find. The new menu should change that. It allows users to see what kind of information is shared and users have the possibility to delete information. Also, personal data used to show relevant advertisements can be managed from the new menu.
Besides that, Facebook has also introduced 'Access Your Information', where users can see an overview of all the information the company has about them. This includes public messages and comments which can be directly deleted from there. It's also possible to download an archive with all data from Facebook (which was already possible before).
The company also states that in the future it will better explain what data it collects and how this is used.
