Facebook works with third party data spies as part of their program to “Collect it all” from everyone on earth, on or offline.

Today, Facebook announced it is terminating its use of third party offline data spies and will no longer integrate offline spying with Facebook’s own online spying.
But this process will take up to six months.

Facebook has posted online a list of the third party data providers, and many of them have a way to opt out of sharing their data with Facebook. Typical of Facebook, this is hard to use – you have to go to each of the web sites of the third party data providers and fill in their request forms or send an email request. At some of these sites, you have to click through multiple pages before finding a link to request opt out!

These third party companies have copies of your paycheck stubs, much of your offline retail purchase history (down to the details of the specific item or items purchased), details about your neighborhood, your cars, your kids, your extended family, government data from public records, financial information or estimated financial information – basically everything except tracking you on line. They had Facebook handle the online tracking for them.

Therefore it is important to go to these web sites and select opt out to turn off their data spigots now – no need to wait six months for Facebook to do what they should have done a dozen years ago.