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The All About Cookies editorial team strives to provide accurate, in-depth information and reviews to help you, our reader, make online privacy decisions with confidence. Here's what you can expect from us:
Meta’s facing new restrictions on how it gathers your data. In an effort to keep its investors happy, it devised a way to keep selling your data with your permission. Facebook link history is billed as a cute little tool that’ll help you see where you’ve been in the past 30 days. In reality, this is a way for Meta to get your permission to track you. This allows the company to create more targeted ads for you as well as sell your data.
The feature is initially disabled, but the service will prompt you to enable it. If you did by accident, or are just now realizing you don’t want to trade your privacy for a 30-day history, then we’ll teach you how to disable it. We’ll also give you some extra tools to help increase your online privacy and security, including the best ad blockers.
If you do end up turning on the link tracking feature and then decide you aren’t interested in it, you can follow these steps to turn it off. We recommend keeping it disabled. While it may help you remember what you’ve looked at, Meta is known for violating its own privacy policies. It doesn’t need any additional help spying on you.
There are two ways to turn off this setting. If you want to go through the settings:
You can also turn off Facebook link history through the links. Here's how:
Facebook says it’s tracking link history to give you the option to see all the links you’ve visited in the past 30 days. While this is a nice way to find something you were looking for that you may have forgotten to save, we don’t know if this is the real reason. If you read the fine print, the reason becomes a little clearer.
The help page on turning off link history mentions that Facebook can use this data to improve your ads across all Meta technologies. This is just a fancy way of saying Meta’s watching you and you’re actually giving permission for them to sell your data to advertisers. Considering that Meta is being called out again as of December 2023 for violating its own privacy policies, it’s a wonder any of us keep these apps on our phones. Data sales is a big business, and Meta is raking in the cash.
Yes, you should turn off Facebook link history tracking. By collecting and using your data for targeted ads (and whatever else it isn’t disclosing), Facebook is leaving you more susceptible to spam, phishing, fraud, and other malicious activities you find online. Not to mention the risk of identity theft from credentials that are sold to data mining companies.
As a general rule, you shouldn’t give companies the permissions necessary to track you. This means disabling unnecessary cookies, using ad blockers and anti-tracking technology, and, yes, disabling Facebook’s link history tracking. The slight benefit of having the link tracking isn’t nearly worth having all your data viewed, especially considering Facebook and Instagram are tracking your activity on your entire phone, not just when you’re on the app.
If you’re serious about your privacy, we suggest deleting social media apps from your phone and using the browser option. Your browser has more allowances for security-based software and apps to protect you.
This may sound a little extra, but using your mobile browser to access social media platforms like Facebook can help increase security by incorporating content blockers that may not reach apps. Also, by deleting the apps from your devices, you’re removing Meta’s ability to look at other data on your device. Meta is known for using its apps to snoop into other parts of your phone or computer.
If you’re wondering what kind of security-based software and apps you should use, we’ve compiled a list of what we use and what we think is worth your time and energy:
Ad and tracker blockers can stop companies like Meta from following you around the web. They work best with browsers rather than apps, but that doesn’t mean they can’t stop some of the tracking Meta does on your mobile device.
Below we’ve included some of the best ad blockers we’ve tested. We especially like products that offer a variety of security solutions like antivirus and VPNs with blockers.
Instantly blocks distracting ads on millions of websites, including Facebook and YouTube ads
Blocks third-party trackers to protect your privacy and information
Improves page load times and enables faster browsing
Stops intrusive ads before they can even load, improving browsing experience and speed
Identifies malware-ridden files and protects against visiting malicious websites
Encrypts your data and blocks third-party trackers for increased security and privacy
Blocks ads, banners, and pop-ups on your browser and apps, including smart TVs
Enjoy boosted browsing speeds and save money on mobile data with its effective ad-blocking capabilities
Added benefit of a VPN to encrypt your data, hide your IP address, avoid phishing scams, and minimize malware risks
The link history feature tracks all of your links visited in the past 30 days, according to Facebook. This means anything from that blog post about homemade Velveeta (not kidding) to a GoFundMe to miracle undergarments; it’ll all be saved in your link history.
That’s a little creepy for us. From a security perspective, just disable it and save anything you think you might want to revisit.
To clear Facebook’s link history, you’ll first need to open Facebook. The next step is to go to Settings & Privacy and then click Link History. Once you’re in the link history archive, you can hit the Clear All button to clear your link history.
If you just want to delete one or two, you can manually delete them in the same place by tapping the X next to the link itself. This is the same process no matter if you have an Android or an iPhone. You can change your Facebook privacy settings to reduce the amount of data collected about you.
You can delete your Facebook connection history through the Accounts Center:
You can also delete the data through your Facebook settings:
Being tracked online isn’t completely avoidable, but it's worth your time and effort to reduce it as much as you can. If you can do so, it will help protect you from spam, scams, identity thieves, and so much more.
Ad blockers and tracker blockers do a lot, but you can help the process by rejecting any prompts that give your permission, like Facebook link tracking. It might seem like a nifty little tool, but the real reason behind it is just to use your data to make more money.
Instantly blocks distracting ads on millions of websites, including Facebook and YouTube ads
Blocks third-party trackers to protect your privacy and information
Improves page load times and enables faster browsing
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