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Facebook can track your browsing even after you've logged out, judge says

theguardian.com

81–90 of 208 posts

Re: Facebook can track your browsing even after you've logged out, judge says

#81
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use PrivacyBadger you don't have more facebook cookie on 3rd party websites, so they dont track you. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/privacy-badge... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/privacy-badger/pke...

also firefox "containers" now allow you to use a separate cookie set for different domains. https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers/

I used it a few weeks ago in test-pilot program, it was hard to use, difficult to open new tabs in container I wanted.

Re: Facebook can track your browsing even after you've logged out, judge says

#82
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the pointer. Wish this worked on iOS, where the only option is to use a dedicated browser for accessing Facebook. Not sure how Brave deals with Facebook cookies on iOS.

Why can't you use firefox on iOS? All addons should work normally. https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/ios/

Apple does not allow browser extensions. Firefox (any non-Apple browser) on iOS is a wrapper around Mobile Safari.

Re: Facebook can track your browsing even after you've logged out, judge says

#83
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also firefox "containers" now allow you to use a separate cookie set for different domains. https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers/

I used it a few weeks ago in test-pilot program, it was hard to use, difficult to open new tabs in container I wanted.

Yeah, it wasn't that helpful. In the last few weeks they made it so you can right click on a page once opened in a container and "always open in this container"

Re: Facebook can track your browsing even after you've logged out, judge says

#84
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the website owner has to allow it (assuming the know the implications of what they are doing). You could assume it but it's not necessary the same people who designed the web page that add those facebok "features". From my impression, often than not you have some "social media marketing expert" that does this. And they do not give a rats ass about any nefarious tracking and will continue to be blissfully ignoran…

The website owner still has the ultimate responsibility for what is served on their site. If they employ some "social media marketing expert" who deploys tracking code, then that's still on them.

On the other hand, Facebook could design their social media widgets in a way that doesn't require the user to send a GET request to Facebook unless the user actively clicks to share.

Re: Facebook can track your browsing even after you've logged out, judge says

#85

I have a few questions. 1) “Facebook’s intrusion could have easily been blocked, but plaintiffs chose not to do so,” This seems like a dangerous precedent. So if we can block surveillance attempts and we don't try, then it's our fault? > “The fact that a user’s web browser automatically sends the same information to both parties does not establish that one party intercepted the user’s communication with the other,” T…

> Nothing happens "automatically" Actually, the problem is [add: after the website is created, and tracking code is put there by someone] that it all happens automatically. See, there is another perspective into this. Not exactly correct (I admit, there is some stretching and it's not all solid), but just the general idea... The semi-forgotten term for the browser is user agent . Point is, it really should act on beh…

> Maybe we should actually start blaming browser vendors for shipping badly pre-configured software with the defaults that consciously and willingly trade privacy for "not breaking" the web?

This.

The writing was on the wall when the conversation became about "balancing" the interests of users and huge content factories. And now web-DRM is a standard.

Fuck that; my computer, my rules.

I had a funny conversation recently with someone who was arguing that I was breaking etiquette, or perhaps an implied contract (it wasn't clear) by messing with cookies. He realized the absurdity about the time I asked if I was ethically obligated to back up and restore the cookies in case of drive failure, but people have some really odd notions about their right to control state on my machine.

In some ways I prefer the black-hat types; at least they're aware that they're working against my interests and don't become indignant when I point it out.

Re: Facebook can track your browsing even after you've logged out, judge says

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old Opera used to have each tab being a separate environment. For some reason we are mostly back to "private windows" now, which aren't separate at all between each other.

We changed that for a reason. No use wants to be logged out that often. Actually most facebook user probably enter their password one time a month. Less if they use the mobile.

Wish it were still an option; I use quite a bit of RAM on multiple instances of browsers for this very reason.

Re: Facebook can track your browsing even after you've logged out, judge says

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just quit Facebook?

For me, the reason is "Because there are people on Facebook that I want to communicate with".

I stayed for so long for that very reason. My usage went down so much, that the only time I logged on was to briefly look at the news feed (of which I hardly recognized anybody anymore. Just posts by peoples' friends of friends).

I decided to just cut it out and hope that I see those people again in real life. If not, then the road goes elsewhere. Feels a little more human.

Re: Facebook can track your browsing even after you've logged out, judge says

#88
The article or the judge (not sure which) suggests using incognito mode. While this will keep browsing history private for a particular session, it's only effective locally. Tracking from the server is still possible either through being logged in or through browser fingerprinting, which is surprisingly accurate.

Here's a good demo which uses fingerprinting to show how ineffective incognito mode is: http://www.nothingprivate.ml/

Re: Facebook can track your browsing even after you've logged out, judge says

#89
post #15

Firefox has a pretty neat feature I discovered recently: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Projec... It lets you run multiple sessions in one window, where each tab belongs to a specific session with separated cookies and such. I've got a bunch of tabs where I'm logged in to Facebook, another set where I'm logged in to Google and the rest of them where I'm not logged in to either. Of course they c…

I've been tempted to write something that goes a bit further. I'd like traffic to each site to be routed through proxies with different IP addresses. (Perhaps even to the point where my devices are automatically managing a set of nodes or Lambdas on AWS.)

Along with that, it will still be necessary to fix some browser information leaks that could be used for fingerprinting

If someone is tempted to beat me to it, go for it!

Re: Facebook can track your browsing even after you've logged out, judge says

#90

I have a few questions. 1) “Facebook’s intrusion could have easily been blocked, but plaintiffs chose not to do so,” This seems like a dangerous precedent. So if we can block surveillance attempts and we don't try, then it's our fault? > “The fact that a user’s web browser automatically sends the same information to both parties does not establish that one party intercepted the user’s communication with the other,” T…

> Nothing happens "automatically" Actually, the problem is [add: after the website is created, and tracking code is put there by someone] that it all happens automatically. See, there is another perspective into this. Not exactly correct (I admit, there is some stretching and it's not all solid), but just the general idea... The semi-forgotten term for the browser is user agent . Point is, it really should act on beh…

>The semi-forgotten term for the browser is user agent. Point is, it really should act on behalf of the user.

The user agent concept is long dead and buried. Modern web browser is more like a virtual OS, a platform for running arbitrary code loaded from the internet, a hosting environment for temporary lending computing power of user's device and its network access to whomever was able to lure the user to their website.

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