A Harris County judge, ruling in a case involving the sex trafficking of a 16-year-old girl, temporarily blocked a privacy tool released with much fanfare by Facebook on Tuesday.
A Houston attorney, Annie McAdams, won a temporary restraining order against the the social network after what McAdams described as a contentious hearing before State District Judge Tanya Garrison in the 334th District Court. The order, which affects tens of millions Facebook users in the United States, halts the the rollout of its Off-Facebook Activity tool, which lets users disconnect data from their accounts that was collected from their actions on other websites and apps.
That data is partly what enables personalized ads on Facebook, and has caused some people to believe Facebook is listening to conversations via users’ smartphones.
The case, Jane Doe vs. Facebook, involves an anonymous plaintiff who claims she was lured into sex trafficking via Facebook. The suit was originally filed in October 2018, and an initial temporary restraining order was issued in August 2019 when the plaintiff argued that the tool could cause evidence in the case to be changed or deleted.
Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg promised the tool in 2018, the result of changes in the way company handles user information in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which involved a third parties using personal data in ways that violated Facebook’s rules. The original TRO delayed the release in the United States, although the tool has been available for a while in a handful of other countries.
Facebook has 240 million users in the United States and Canada.
HOW TO: Lock down or delete your Facebook account
McAdams said Facebook’s attorneys have not provided data from the account of the man who lured her client, although they have said the information was preserved.
“That is what is so alarming,” McAdams said. “We asked for this evidence, and there has been no objection to providing it. They have not provided it.”
The lawsuit alleges the man “groomed” the girl on Facebook, then convinced her to come to a meeting where she was sexually assaulted by seven men.
In response to Tuesday’s order, a Facebook spokesperson provided a statement: “This order is entirely without basis and undermines everyone on Facebook’s ability to control their data online.” The spokesperson said Facebook will appeal the ruling.
The U.S. release of the tool, which was announced in a blog post under Zuckerberg’s byline, was timed for Data Privacy Day, an annual event sponsored by the National Cyber Security Alliance. The blog post said the tool will be available for about 2 billion users. Facebook had 2.45 billion users globally in the third quarter of 2019.
The temporary restraining order expired after 14 days, and this one has the same time limit, McAdams said. A hearing on the TRO will be held on Feb. 7 before State District Judge Steven Kirkland.
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Off-Facebook Activity lets users control whether data collected as the result of using websites and third-party apps is pulled into Facebook and associated with their accounts. The feature lets them disconnect all such activity from their accounts, but it does not necessarily delete the data. Users can also prevent such activity from being collected in the future, either in general or per site or app.
The new feature is buried in privacy settings of the desktop and mobile versions of Facebook
Facebook works with online advertising networks that place ads on websites and in apps. Those networks include code that can identify Facebook users and track their activity. The actions they take are then pulled into Facebook and used to help personalize ads and may even determine stories that are shown in a user’s news feed. The data also may affect the ads you see in sites away from Facebook.
For example, if you shop for a car on an automaker's website, you may start seeing ads in your news feed for cars. These ads may also follow you as you use the web or third-party apps.
On a web page describing the new tool, Facebook says doing this won’t prevent users from seeing ads, but that “the ads that you will see may be less personalized to you.”
Among the things the tool lets users do:
- See a list of sites and apps that have funneled activity data to Facebook, and prevent them from doing so in the future.
- Disconnect past off-Facebook data associated with a user’s account. The data itself is not deleted, however.
- View and control the information Facebook has collected based on category.
- Download the information generated by your activity both on and off Facebook.
The latter two items have been available on Facebook for a while, but are now included on the Off-Facebook Activity page.
The tool is available on the web version of Facebook at facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/. On the mobile app, click the three-bar menu icon, then Settings & Privacy > Privacy Shortcuts. Scroll down to Your Facebook Information and tap “View or clear your off-Facebook activity”.
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