Last week Facebook announced plans to target advertising to all of its users by utilising information gained by your browsing history. Basically Facebook will act as intermediary and deliver the targeted ads from advertiser to user, but stressed that it won’t share an individual user’s web-browsing information with advertisers directly.

There are two ways of looking at this latest change, you could take the liberal approach of “if this means I get adverts of products or services that directly interest me rather than random garbage then what’s the problem?” or the slightly pessimistic view of “how dare they use my personal browsing history to benefit advertisers”

This has sparked an interesting debate on how our browsing data is used, but there is a surprising number of websites already doing this anyway, how else do you think that shortly after booking flights to New York, it seems that every website you visit has adverts for New York Hotels.

However the Digital Advertising Alliance has come to the rescue to prevent your browsing habits outside of Zuckerberg’s behemoth from being used to help deliver custom Facebook ads, this service will also raise a few raised eyebrows at just how many companies are utilising your browsing history.

So if you would like to take a look at what’s under the hood of your browser, simply disable any pop up blockers you may have installed and follow these simple steps on how to stop Facebook from using your browsing history for targeted ads.

Visit the Digital Advertising Allowance here and the scanning against your browser will begin.

You might be a little surprised at just how many companies are using your browsing history so tick  the box for Facebook and any other cheeky sites you don’t feel comfortable following you and simply press “Submit your choices”

After a short wait, you should be greeted with a message saying “Opt Out Complete” and you can smile smugly safe in the knowledge that you just secured a tiny victory against Mark Zuckerberg and maybe even watch the scene from the movie “Social Network” that states Ads aren’t cool, Facebook is Cool.

Eduardo Saverin: “You know what, settle an argument for us. I’d say its time to start making money from theFacebook but Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want advertising. Who’s right?”

Sean Parker: “Neither of you, yet. TheFacebook is cool. That’s what it’s got going for it.”

Mark Zuckerberg: “Yeah.”

Sean Parker: “You don’t want to ruin it with ads because ads aren’t cool.”

Mark Zuckerberg: “Exactly.”

How times have changed and ironically, maybe this is the reason that Facebook is no longer cool.