We’ve all had the experience of looking at a pair of shoes online and then seeing ads for shoes pop up in our Facebook feed. That’s how Facebook advertisers get us to buy things; if we looked at them, we were more likely to buy them.

Now Facebook is bringing a tool, soft-launched in August of last year, to all of us that allows us to manage this information transfer. It’s called the Off-Facebook Activity Tool, and it lets you see what stuff is being sent to Facebook, and then delete it if you want.

"Starting today, our Off-Facebook Activity tool is available to people on Facebook around the world," Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post. "Other companies send us information about your activity on their sites, and we use that information to show you ads that are relevant to you. Now you can see a summary of that information and delete it from your account if you choose."

While sharing this information is still part of Facebook's business model, having a tool that lets you manage it is a nice step forward in terms of transparency and privacy control.