Pinterest is often rolling out new features, but the ones we love include personalised pin and board recommendations based on the sites you visit.
Pinterest Offers Control On Your Boards And On Your Pins.
The social bookmarking platform supports a “do not track” browser feature, but otherwise will use your cookies, log data and device information to personalise what pins and boards you may see.
Do Not Track, for those unfamiliar, is similar in spirit to the Do Not Call registry, in that it allows consumers to state their preferences — in this case, that they do not want to have their website browsing activity tracked or personal data collected.
While the major browser makers have gotten on board, there are still only a small number of websites that support Do Not Track.
Pinterest users can turn the feature on or off from their account Settings page at any time, the company says. Note, you can do the same thing on Twitter.
Pinterest’s support for Do Not Track helps the service better analyse user activity in order to introduce more personalised features. For example, the company added a new “Edit Your Home Feed” button on web and mobile that made it easier to follow or unfollow boards. When you go in to edit your feed, you’ll be shown personalised pin and board suggestions based on things you’ve already been pinning on the service.
“So if you’re planning a party and have gone to lots of party sites recently, we’ll try to suggest boards to make your event a hit,” Pinterest software engineer Ke Chen wrote.
In addition to browser tracking, Pinterest may show you pins from users with similar interests, and also use your gender or location to select pins for you.
You can always check updates on the company privacy policy, which detail the information that the company collects, as well as how it uses the info.
Pinterest’s other features are the “edit” button (pictured above) that lets users better customise their home feed.
That’s why users must constantly make a choice about whether or not their privacy — or their personalisations — are the most important thing to them.
Don’t forget to follow Women Love Tech on Pinterest.
Images: Pinterest Women Love Tech Boards
If you are interested in finding out more about how to avoid getting tracked on the internet, then we can recommend this story on Gizmodo.
