Facebook lives on data, on the data of its users. Yes, I know it’s more than obvious to most at this point in the movie, which is like commenting that the butler was the killer when you finished watching the movie, you left the theater, you drove home, you parked, you entered the house, you put on your pajamas, had dinner and played with the cat a little. But as surprising as this may seem, there are still people who are not fully aware of it.

The problem (I mean Facebook) is that It is increasingly difficult to access your users’ data at will.which is more than justified by its dubious track record in the past, whether due to data breaches, security flaws that allowed advertisers to misuse its tools (ahem, ahem, Cambridge Analytica), for enabling and even empowering bias. In short, the list is not categorical, but it is categorical.

Together with pressure from regulators, among which the role of the European Union stands out, Another big blow to Meta came from Apple, when those from Cupertino implemented a transparency feature into app tracking in iOS 14.5. The Meta complained actively and passively, but to no avail, and after some time it was confirmed that this measure was very beneficial for the users and therefore quite negative for the Meta. It goes without saying that Google’s advances to offer a similar feature on Android haven’t been well-received on Facebook either.

Although it is still the most used social network today, Facebook saw its users decline for the first time in its history in 2022, and when you add to that the fact that it is increasingly facing more restrictions on the data it does business with, we understand that they are concerned . So, as Gizmodo says, The Facebook app for Android and iOS has found a new source of data: link history. And yes, as you probably already imagined, it consists of saving a history of all the links that you have accessed from the application.

What does Meta use this data for? Of course, to offer you a more customized experience of use (advertisements), as indicated on the history settings information page. How long are links kept in this history? In this case, there seem to be differences depending on the region. Therefore, according to Gizmodo, we understand that for the United States, they are kept for 90 days. When viewing the information page for Spain (with European Union regulations) this period is shortened to 30 days.

And what is the most important thing in all of this? If you are a Facebook user through its applications, the link history is activated by default, but you can (and should) disable it follow the steps on the information page about this new feature.