When you clear “off Facebook activity” via Facebook settings, does that remove personal identifiers from this specific dataset?
Executive summary
Clearing “Off‑Facebook Activity” severs the visible connection between third‑party event records and the user’s account in Meta’s interface, but it does not reliably erase the underlying identifiers that Facebook and outside partners may retain or use to rebuild profiles (or the copies held by those partners) [1] [2]. Multiple reporters and privacy trackers show Meta explicitly allows continued collection, long retention and “shadow” data that survives account deletion or clearing actions, so a single clear is a limited privacy control, not a blanket data deletion [2] [3] [4].
1. What “clear” actually does inside Meta’s controls
When a user goes to Settings → Your activity off Meta technologies and chooses to clear recent activity, the platform presents and removes a record of which apps and websites shared events with Meta and dissociates those events from the account in the user-facing dashboard; guides to the control describe viewing Recent Activity and clearing it from the interface [1]. That user‑facing removal is what most outlets call “disconnecting” or “clearing” off‑Facebook activity: it breaks the explicit link shown in the account between those external events and the profile [1].
2. What “clear” does not — retention, backups, and shadow copies
Reporting and privacy summaries make clear that Meta’s internal data retention and cross‑site profiling are broader than the dashboard implies: the company has no simple public policy promising complete erasure of deactivated or deleted account material, and it keeps backup copies and different categories of data for operational or legal reasons [2] [4] [3]. Practical coverage warns that even after deletion Meta may retain identifiers like name, email or phone in shadow profiles created from others’ address books and partner data, and that copies of activity data may persist in backups or partner systems [3] [4]. Commonsense Privacy and other explainers emphasize that third‑party partners continue to track and can continue to supply activity information — often including device or purchase details — regardless of one individual’s dashboard action [5].
3. Personal identifiers: removed from the dashboard, not necessarily removed from the dataset
The available reporting draws a distinction between unlinking activity from a visible account record and actually purging identifiers from Meta’s datasets or from the databases of the companies that sent the data. Digiday and privacy analysts show Facebook builds profiles from off‑Facebook signals even when accounts are deactivated, and that the systems are designed to keep receiving and merging such signals over time, which implies clearing a dashboard association does not guarantee deletion of identifiers inside Meta’s systems [2]. PCMag documents the path to view and clear off‑Meta activity but does not claim the action destroys every stored identifier or partner copy, and other sources warn Meta may retain certain contact identifiers after account deletion [1] [3].
4. Who still has the data after a clear — Meta, partners, and friends
Even after a person clears off‑Facebook activity, data that others have shared about them remains with the service while those people stay on the platform, and third‑party companies that reported the activity retain their own records unless separately asked or legally compelled to delete them [4] [5]. That means Meta can be fed new matching signals from partners or friends’ address books that recreate links or shadow attributes, and partners’ independent retention policies often fall outside the reach of a single user’s clear action [5] [3].
5. Practical takeaways and realistic expectations
Clearing Off‑Facebook Activity is a useful privacy hygiene step: it reduces immediate visibility of those signals in the Meta account interface and interrupts straightforward targeting based on the present link [1]. It is not a forensic erasure of all identifiers inside Meta’s infrastructure or of copies held by external companies: long retention, backups, shadow profiles, and continuing partner feeds mean identifiers can persist or be reattached over time [2] [3] [4]. For stronger guarantees, reporting and privacy guides point toward layered measures — limiting app permissions, using ad‑tracking blockers, contacting third‑party sites about their records, and recognizing platform limits — while noting that public coverage does not document a one‑click way to wipe every identifier from every system that ever saw it [5] [1].