Facebook - are there advertisers who can't be hidden?
July 8, 2019 9:34 AM Subscribe
Some advertisers on Facebook seem to survive me "hiding" them - all of them are automotive companies or associated services. What gives?
I routinely hide any advertiser on Facebook I receive an advert from or who shows up in my "Advertisers who uploaded a list with your info" list under settings > ad preferences > advertisers. By hide I mean I select the option to "hide ads from Advertiser". This results in the advertiser showing in the "Advertisers you have hidden" list in the settings screen and no more ads from them.
Over the last 18 months of so I've hidden somewhere north of 2300 advertisers, and not sure if I've hit some threshold or not but very rarely if at all see any adverts/sponsored content on Facebook (like maybe one or two a month at most) - along with aggressively restricting all the other privacy options, removing the apps ability to get location data or send notifications, etc it's made the app far more usable.
However, I've noticed that there a very small number of advertisers - all Automobile companies or related services like insurance - who despite me hiding them - never get removed from the "Advertisers who uploaded a list with your info" list. The screen does say the advertiser is now hidden, but it is still on the list. The weird thing is - we do the same process on my spouse's FB account (completely separate account on another device) and the same advertisers don't get removed either.
Examples are Allstate, Mercedes-Benz USA, Rairdon Auto Group, Leith Cars, and Jim Glover Auto Family. It's the same advertisers on both accounts, we have hidden them multiple times, but they never leave the "advertisers who uploaded a list with your info" list - where as all of the other 2300 or so advertisers have.
To be clear - we don't seem to be getting any adverts from these companies that I've noticed, but now I'm really curious why these companies don't appear to be hidden and why they are all the same industry. Did they have some extra data on me that allowed them to survive being hidden?
I have tried removing them from inside the FB app, as well as through the web app. Neither of our FB accounts "like" any of these advertisers pages, we are not members of any groups associated with automobiles or anything like that, and we have zero "interests" - again due to aggressively removing any interests FB adds to our accounts. The only link I can see is that Allstate own eSurance, who I have done business with. But none of the other auto companies that survive being hidden I have any association with (and some of them are smaller dealerships in states we have never lived in, let alone bought a car in).
Just random weirdness in the platform, or something else? Its mindboggling how many advertisers upload a contact list with me on it apparently and I really like clearing that out.
I routinely hide any advertiser on Facebook I receive an advert from or who shows up in my "Advertisers who uploaded a list with your info" list under settings > ad preferences > advertisers. By hide I mean I select the option to "hide ads from Advertiser". This results in the advertiser showing in the "Advertisers you have hidden" list in the settings screen and no more ads from them.
Over the last 18 months of so I've hidden somewhere north of 2300 advertisers, and not sure if I've hit some threshold or not but very rarely if at all see any adverts/sponsored content on Facebook (like maybe one or two a month at most) - along with aggressively restricting all the other privacy options, removing the apps ability to get location data or send notifications, etc it's made the app far more usable.
However, I've noticed that there a very small number of advertisers - all Automobile companies or related services like insurance - who despite me hiding them - never get removed from the "Advertisers who uploaded a list with your info" list. The screen does say the advertiser is now hidden, but it is still on the list. The weird thing is - we do the same process on my spouse's FB account (completely separate account on another device) and the same advertisers don't get removed either.
Examples are Allstate, Mercedes-Benz USA, Rairdon Auto Group, Leith Cars, and Jim Glover Auto Family. It's the same advertisers on both accounts, we have hidden them multiple times, but they never leave the "advertisers who uploaded a list with your info" list - where as all of the other 2300 or so advertisers have.
To be clear - we don't seem to be getting any adverts from these companies that I've noticed, but now I'm really curious why these companies don't appear to be hidden and why they are all the same industry. Did they have some extra data on me that allowed them to survive being hidden?
I have tried removing them from inside the FB app, as well as through the web app. Neither of our FB accounts "like" any of these advertisers pages, we are not members of any groups associated with automobiles or anything like that, and we have zero "interests" - again due to aggressively removing any interests FB adds to our accounts. The only link I can see is that Allstate own eSurance, who I have done business with. But none of the other auto companies that survive being hidden I have any association with (and some of them are smaller dealerships in states we have never lived in, let alone bought a car in).
Just random weirdness in the platform, or something else? Its mindboggling how many advertisers upload a contact list with me on it apparently and I really like clearing that out.
Here's another article about how these advertisers might be getting your info. I think it's likely some data broker has some piece of information about you that they keep selling. "Facebook calls on brokers like Acxiom, Epsilon, and TransUnion (Zuck also refers to these partners as 'data providers') to act as a conduit between Facebook and individual advertisers looking to reach targeted audiences."
I don't know if you can figure out what data provider has your data, but that's probably the source.
posted by bluedaisy at 11:49 AM on July 8, 2019
I don't know if you can figure out what data provider has your data, but that's probably the source.
posted by bluedaisy at 11:49 AM on July 8, 2019
https://socialfixer.com/
posted by yoyo_nyc at 5:48 PM on July 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by yoyo_nyc at 5:48 PM on July 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Thanks all
On the data harvesting itself - it’s almost a given that our data is resold etc and I’m less concerned about how many entities are uploading lists with my contact information on it, and more wanting to know why a very small number of them can’t be hidden.
But interesting idea on changing the email address the account is associated with etc. I suspect the old email address will be stored in the matrix and associated with my account (like how deleted accounts stay in the social graph etc) but it may be worth a shot.
Social fixer looks interesting - though that’s really just masking the things you don’t want to see from displaying in the browser (and we typically use the native app). It looks neat though and I’ll give it a twirl.
As to why some advertisers can’t be hidden - I’m guessing it’s something weird and wonderful that I don’t have line of sight on (like the list was uploaded before a certain date when a FB policy changed or something else that’s not visible to me or isn’t something I can control as an end user). I’ll keep happily blocking away - for the moment seems to be working in terms of not seeing ads very much at all.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 7:55 PM on July 8, 2019
On the data harvesting itself - it’s almost a given that our data is resold etc and I’m less concerned about how many entities are uploading lists with my contact information on it, and more wanting to know why a very small number of them can’t be hidden.
But interesting idea on changing the email address the account is associated with etc. I suspect the old email address will be stored in the matrix and associated with my account (like how deleted accounts stay in the social graph etc) but it may be worth a shot.
Social fixer looks interesting - though that’s really just masking the things you don’t want to see from displaying in the browser (and we typically use the native app). It looks neat though and I’ll give it a twirl.
As to why some advertisers can’t be hidden - I’m guessing it’s something weird and wonderful that I don’t have line of sight on (like the list was uploaded before a certain date when a FB policy changed or something else that’s not visible to me or isn’t something I can control as an end user). I’ll keep happily blocking away - for the moment seems to be working in terms of not seeing ads very much at all.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 7:55 PM on July 8, 2019
Response by poster: So in the last 24 hours Facebook has done a major refresh on the advertisers settings page...and my direct problem seems to have resolved - all of the previously unhidable advertisers are now hidden correctly. So yay - that had been bugging me for ages!
What is interesting (and I’d encourage people to check out the new advertisers settings) is that you can now see who is doing the initial upload of your data and sharing the data to advertisers (its the usual suspects for me like Experian, Oracle Data cloud etc plus some other random companies). You can’t really do much about it - though some (not all) of the companies have a privacy options link when you click on them, with links to opt out your data collection etc. Bit like playing whack-a-mole but I guess you get some visibility.
Also looks like they have changed the way advertisers are shown to you on the page - including only showing advertisers who have sent you an advert in the last 7 days.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 7:08 PM on July 9, 2019
What is interesting (and I’d encourage people to check out the new advertisers settings) is that you can now see who is doing the initial upload of your data and sharing the data to advertisers (its the usual suspects for me like Experian, Oracle Data cloud etc plus some other random companies). You can’t really do much about it - though some (not all) of the companies have a privacy options link when you click on them, with links to opt out your data collection etc. Bit like playing whack-a-mole but I guess you get some visibility.
Also looks like they have changed the way advertisers are shown to you on the page - including only showing advertisers who have sent you an advert in the last 7 days.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 7:08 PM on July 9, 2019
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Or... could it be bots and spam accounts pretending to be realtors and car dealers? And the ads you might see are actually for other things, not cars and real estate?
In any case, Facebook is going to show you some kind of advertising, right? I don't think you can opt out of everything.
One thing you could try: create an email address you only use for Facebook and see if you can remove any other email addresses you have associated with your FB account. You could also try removing your phone number and/or using a fake number, but I don't know if a number would have to be verified.
At this point... continuing to remove these same advertisers seems like it's not working. Is there anyway you can try a few strategies or just make peace with it as the price of using the platform?
posted by bluedaisy at 11:33 AM on July 8, 2019