Facebook, touted as the world’s largest social networking site has recently made a business move by tying up with few well-known retailers in the United States, Canada, Australia, and London.
So, from now on the Mark Zuckerberg Company will keep a watch on its users while they make a physical purchase in shopping malls and retail stores. And then will try to target them with relevant product ads, offers, promotions, and discounts.
While this move is being appreciated by many, they are few of them who are strongly opposing it as it an offensive way to deprive users of data privacy.
News is out that Facebook aka FB will from now on gathering info such as names, card details( if contactless), email ids and phone numbers of its customers who have shopped at its partner outlets and will then match the data with the profiles. The company then targets those profiles with relevant ads which might boost the sales for its retail partners.
A source from FB says that the collected data will be digital and will be hashed, and will be deleted after 6 months period.
Now, to those who are concerned with this approach can go to the ‘Ads’ section in Facebook settings and choose the option ‘Not allowed’ under the ‘ads based on data from partners’.
Note- Pretty soon FB is thinking to introduce ads into WhatsApp messaging app and is planning to gather and integrate data from the chats onto its ads section. Therefore, this activity will enable it to target users with relevant ads with retailer keywords analyzed from their chats.
