Facebook lets you delete personal data with new privacy tools

Facebook has launched a host of new privacy features to help its users delete their personal data or monitor how it is collected.

The social network’s chief privacy officer, Erin Egan, wrote in a blogpost that the company wanted to put users “in control” of their personal data following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

She said the company had also received complaints that “privacy settings and other important tools are too hard to find”.

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One of the new features is called “Access Your Information”, she said, allowing people to manage their data such as comments and search terms. Users can also permanently delete “anything” from their timeline or profile.

On mobile devices, The Guardian says Facebook has compiled all privacy settings into one menu, rather than across “nearly 20 different screens” as it was in previous versions.

However, the social media giant hasn’t changed the way users permanently delete their profile, the newspaper says, as the option is still “buried in a help menu”.

Many of the new privacy features are required by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), The Independent reports, which is the EU’s new data regulator that comes into effect on 25 May.

These new guidelines will clamp down on “how organisations handle the public's data”, BBC News reports, and will also impose “harsher penalties” for data breaches.