British consumers will be able to opt out of targeted online advertising after a campaigner’s victory in her landmark case against Meta.

Tanya O’Carroll, 37, took Facebook’s parent company to court because it would not let her turn off the user profiling it uses to sell adverts.

O’Carroll was “bombarded” with baby content after becoming a mother in 2017. When she tried to turn the adverts off using Facebook’s settings, the link did not work.

After digging further, she discovered that Facebook had tagged her with more than 700 characteristics based on her activity. It inferred what films she watched, where she wanted to go on holiday, her shopping habits, the clothes she liked, her political sensibilities and health, relationship and family matters. Some of