Facebook can track your browsing even after you've logged out, judge says • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by tedd4u » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 5:11 PM UTC

propogandist wrote: post #107

borne0 wrote: post #35

While on the topic of tracking, is there a plugin that lets you delete cookies using rules on a per domain basis? for example, cookies are useful for some sites, and others they are useful for certain periods of time, and thereafter it would be nice to get rid of them (and yet more sites shouldn't be able to leave cookies at all). I know there are some plugins that let you block all cookies, or manage them after the…

vanilla cookies in Chrome allows quick cookie clearing (one click) and you can customize rules to save specific cookies. Self Destructing Cookies on FF is fantastic also.

I use this [1] -- it's great. I have it set to delete any cookies not on the whitelist 30 minutes after last set. That way I can log into a site that's not on the whitelist and do something and after I've stopped using for 30 mins I'm logged out and cookies deleted. However - it's not perfect. It doesn't delete local storage, local databases, or Flash™ storage. There is a nest of Chromium issues [2] needed to be resolved to make this work. It looks like the most recent related work was done Sep 2016 [3] so maybe there's some hope, even though the issues have been open for 5+ years. Of course I have the option of working on it myself but having looked at the 5-10 related issues I think it would take quite some time to develop an understanding of all the APIs.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vanilla-cookie-man...

[2] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=78093

[3] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=589586...

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

#132

Post by sametmax » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 5:17 PM UTC

zimpenfish wrote: post #109

sametmax wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know any people around me that have facebook that don't have another way to be reached. So there is something else that makes you stay.

There's a large number of people on Facebook that I interact with that I don't have email / sms / whatever for. There's also a non-negligible number that I'm happy interacting with on Facebook but not on anything more personal.

> There's a large number of people on Facebook that I interact with that I don't have email / sms / whatever for.

You can ask said email/sms/whatever. If the communication matters, you should have them anyway. If not, then those persons are not that important.

> There's a large number of people on Facebook that I interact with that I don't have email / sms / whatever for.

There you go ! Here is one of the other reasons that I stated before. Not the "those people I can only reach through facebook" bullshit.

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

#133

Post by alangpierce » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 5:23 PM UTC

slitaz wrote: post #6

Proper English should have been: "Facebook may track your browsing even after...". The judge can rule about lawfulness, otherwise it looks like they are a investigative reporter that just found out about the technical capability to track users in such a way.

Interesting. For me, it's normal and understandable to use "can" to mean "is allowed to". I certainly know and understand the word "may", and I've heard it's technically more correct, but it feels a little antiquated or overly-formal, so I tend to not use it in conversation but might use it in writing.

One source that "can" is ok here: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/usage/can-or-may

I didn't realize that this use of "can" is something that would cause confusion. Maybe there's a regional difference? I'm from the western United States.

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

#134

Post by olivermarks » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 5:35 PM UTC

Does FB track by IP or cookie or both? I use different browsers for the more invasive tracking sites. For FB (which I use very sparingly these days to stay in touch with people I won't hear about in other circles) I currently use Safari. I log in and out and limit my use of that browser to FB and a handful of other sites.

since Chrome is such a memory hog on macs my principal browsers are opera and brave, both of which work very well on my elderly macbook air.

I have no idea if my somewhat paranoid tracking avoidance is effective against FB though. I see that when I go to the log in page in safari that FB knows how many 'posts' I have stacked up to consume (the little Pavlov's dog red circle with a number in it). I'm assuming I'm being tracked despite being logged out...

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

#135

Post by f4rker » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 5:38 PM UTC

so?

people act like they have all kinds of "civil rights" on the internet. like the right to not be tracked. no such thing exist.

or the "right" to have the internet and web sites work how they imagine things should work

if you dont like the internet dont use it.

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

#136

Post by cooper12 » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 5:53 PM UTC

AlphaWeaver wrote: post #122

jgalt212 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not necessarily, they would be forced anonymize faces.

Like Google Street View already does.

I don't think they were forced. Google is based in the U.S. where it is legal to photograph people in public, yet Google still blurs the faces of those on sidewalks. That and things like license plates seems to me to be them preemptively trying to appease privacy concerns so that support to censor them legally doesn't form.

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

#137

Post by cooper12 » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 5:56 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #56

miguelrochefort wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any problem with that. It's not like people should have exclusivity over who has access to the photons that hit them...

This argument is not even wrong.

It's disingenuous because it reduced a social issue to that of particle physics. It's like me assaulting someone and saying "wow, they sure couldn't handle a collection of atoms exerting momentum on their face", or calling a tornado "some gusts of wind", or other ridiculous things.

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

#138

Post by civilitty » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 5:59 PM UTC

andrewaylett wrote: post #120

m_eiman wrote: 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…

Privacy Badger is also good for things like this: you can be logged into Facebook, but Privacy Badger will block requests to Facebook from third-party sites. https://www.eff.org/privacybadger

Privacy Badger is great and goes way beyond other anti-tracking and ad blockers. They also keep an eye on a lot of the CDNs to make sure they're not running sneaky stuff like canvas finger-printing or using local storage to bypass various protections.

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

#139

Post by oliv__ » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 6:04 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #23

brainfire wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the Tor browser for just Facebook. Stymies IP tracking, and I expect it to do more of the right things to deal with fingerprinting too. Plus it's super slow, encouraging me to not spend too much time on Facebook...

Why not just quit Facebook?

Gosh quitting Facebook has become the new going vegan. Can everyone just mind their own business?

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

#140

Post by castis » Tue, Jul 04, 2017, 6:09 PM UTC

oliv__ wrote: post #139

kerkeslager wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just quit Facebook?

Gosh quitting Facebook has become the new going vegan. Can everyone just mind their own business?

If you truly wanted people to mind their own business, getting them off facebook would be a great start.