Facebook has announced that it's to start using app and website data from your browsing habits to provide more targeted ads—and you'll have to opt out if you don't like it.


Update: We've put together a handy step-by-step guide for opting out here.


The feature, which will hit Facebook accounts in the coming weeks, will provide advertisers with the information required to target Facebook ads more directly. That already happens elsewhere across the internet, but Facebook's previously never used the data in this way. So, look at a new product online—say, a TV or pair of shoes—and you can expect to seem them on your blue feed.

More control is coming to the ads you see, too: soon, Facebook will add a drop-down menu to ads which will allow you to remove a brand from your ad interests. Facebook points out, though, that you'll have to opt-out with the Digital Advertising Alliance to stop your browsing habits being shared with advertisers. Privacy activists, you may start shouting... now. [Facebook]

Image by Spencer E Holtaway under Creative Commons license.