Facebook to End Targeted Ads Built with 3rd-Party Data Mining

 The fallout from the Cambridge Analytica controversy has triggered  Facebook to cancel an advertising tool that pulled data from people's  backgrounds, like whether you own a home or what products you like to  buy."We want to let advertisers know that we will be shutting down Partner Categories," Facebook said on Wednesday. "This product enables third party data providers to offer their targeting directly on Facebook."These third-party providers include Acxiom and Experian, which specializein  mining data on U.S. consumers that can be rented out for marketing  purposes. Information about your ethnicity, marital status, whether you  own a car, the kinds of purchases you make and how much you spend on  them can all be logged. 

The data mining certainly sounds creepy, but it's also legal and standard practice in the marketing world. Acxiom,  for instance, pulls the information from public records, consumer  surveys and other commercial entities that managed to collect your  information with your consent.Facebook decided to let its own advertisers harness the power of these data brokers with its Partner Categories over on its ad platform. But no more. The company is phasing out the tool, amid the growing backlash over the social media giant's privacy practices."We believe this step, winding down over the next six months, will help improve people's privacy on Facebook," the company said.The social media giant's privacy practices have been under the microscope ever since news emerged  that a U.K. political consultancy called Cambridge Analytica managed to  pull the personal data from 50 million Facebook users. It did so with  the help of a third-party app that surveyed Facebook users, by not only  collecting their data, but also vacuuming information on their Facebook  friends.In response, Facebook is revamping its privacy practices,  and Wednesday's move to end the advertising tool represents another  step. Marketers might not like the decision, but the social networking  service is facing a growing #Deletefacebook movement, along with the threat of possible government regulation on data privacy, both of which could derail Facebook's business.