Given that Facebook's business model relies on using people's data to serve them personalised ads, it seemed fair to assume that the Portal smart speaker could serve a purpose beyond simply acting as a voice-activated home assistant that can handle video calls.

Yet Facebook assured people that "no data collected through Portal – even call log data or app usage data, like the fact that you listen to Spotify – will be used to target users with ads on Facebook."

Within days of announcing this claim, however, Facebook was forced to backtrack.

How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Show all 9 1 /9 How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Lock your profile down If you haven’t done this already, do it now. In Settings, hit the Privacy tab. From here, you can control who gets to see your future posts and friends list. Choose from Public, Friends, Only Me and Custom in the dropdown menu. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Limit old posts Annoyingly, changing this has no effect on who’s able to see your past Facebook posts. Instead, on the Privacy page, you have to click on Limit Past Posts, then select Limit Old Posts and finally hit Confirm on the pop-up. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Make yourself harder to find You can stop completely random people from adding you by selecting Friends of Friends from the dropdown menu in the Who can send you friend requests? section of the Privacy page. It’s also worth limiting who can find your Facebook profile with your number and email address. At the bottom of the page is the option to prevent search engines outside of Facebook from linking to your profile. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Control access to your Timeline You can limit who gets to post things on your Timeline and who gets to see posts on your Timeline too. In Settings, go to Timeline and Tagging and edit the sections you want to lock down. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Block people When you block someone, they won’t be able to see things you post on your Timeline, tag you, invite you to events or groups, start conversations with you or add you as a friend. To do it, go to Settings and Blocking. Annoyingly, you have to block people on Messenger separately. You can also add friends to your Restricted list here, which means they’ll still be friends with you but will only be able to see your public posts and things you share on a mutual friend's Timeline. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Review tags One of Facebook’s handiest privacy features is the ability to review posts you’re tagged in before they appear on your Timeline. They’ll still be visible on the News Feed while they’re fresh, but won’t be tied to your profile forever. In Timeline and Tagging, enable Timeline review controls. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Clean up your apps You can view a list of all of the apps you’ve connected to your Facebook account by going to Settings and Apps. The list might be longer than you expected it to be. It’s worth tidying this up to ensure things you no longer use lose access to your personal information. If you don’t want to log into websites and apps with your facebook account, scroll down and turn Platform off. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Change your ad preferences You can view a list of everything Facebook thinks you’re into and tinker with your ad preferences by going to Settings and Adverts. A lot more information is displayed on the desktop site than the app, so we’d recommend doing this on a computer. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Download your data Facebook lets you download all of the data it has on you, including the posts you’ve shared, your messages and photos, ads you’ve clicked on and even the IP addresses that are logged when you log in or out of the site. It’s a hell of a lot of information, which you should download to ensure you never over-share on the social network again.

A spokesperson for Facebook was unable to provide a comment to The Independent at the time of writing on Portal's data collecting practices, though the company confirmed to Recode how the device could in facet be used to target people with ads.

"Portal voice calling is built on the Messenger infrastructure, so when you make a video call on Portal, we collect the same types of information (i.e. usage data such as length of calls, frequency of calls) that we collect on other Messenger-enabled devices," a spokesperson said.

"We may use this information to inform the ads we show you across our platforms. Other general usage data, such as aggregate usage of apps, etc., may also feed into the information that we use to serve ads."

In its promotional materials for the Portal, Facebook has been keen to stress the device's privacy credentials, stating on its website that it was created with "privacy, safety and security in mind."

The internet giant has even sacrificed technology that it has previously implemented within its social network to make the site more efficient and user friendly, such as facial recognition.

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It does, however, include rather unnerving tracking technology in its camera that uses artificial intelligence to follow people around the room. In an apparent effort to assuage fears surrounding this function, Facebook included a "privacy shutter" to allow people to physically block the camera's lens – a feature that was only reportedly added in response to poor public trust in Facebook.

Revelations that the personal data of 87 million Facebook users was harvested for the purpose of political profiling in the build up to the 2016 US Presidential elections and the UK's EU referendum of the same year, combined with more recent scandals surrounding the theft of 30 million user accounts, have contributed to the firm becoming the least-trusted brand for consumers when it comes to handling personal data.

The Portal and Portal Plus is Facebook's attempt to compete with similar smart home devices from Amazon, Apple and Google (Facebook)

And while the camera features a blocking device, the Portal comes with smart home assistants similar to those found on the Amazon Echo and Google Home.