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Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures

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11–20 of 109 posts

Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures

#11
post #4

Friendly reminder, blocking all and any of Facebook's pre-click tracking measures can be implemented easily in AdBlock Plus (or any equivalent ad blocker) with the following rules: ||facebook.com^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net ||facebook.net^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net ||fbcdn.com^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net ||fbcdn.net^$domain=~fa…

Also worth noting that Firefox users who prefer the idea of whitelisting cross-site requests rather than blacklisting them, can install RequestPolicy.

Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures

#13
post #4

Friendly reminder, blocking all and any of Facebook's pre-click tracking measures can be implemented easily in AdBlock Plus (or any equivalent ad blocker) with the following rules: ||facebook.com^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net ||facebook.net^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net ||fbcdn.com^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net ||fbcdn.net^$domain=~fa…

Thanks for these. Is there a page I can go to for blocking rules on all of the "social networking" sites?

Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures

#15
post #4

Friendly reminder, blocking all and any of Facebook's pre-click tracking measures can be implemented easily in AdBlock Plus (or any equivalent ad blocker) with the following rules: ||facebook.com^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net ||facebook.net^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net ||fbcdn.com^$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net ||fbcdn.net^$domain=~fa…

Thanks for these. Is there a page I can go to for blocking rules on all of the "social networking" sites?

The Ghostery plugin can handle all this stuff easily.

Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures

#18
I'm glad this came up to make me think about it more; I'd already gotten in the habit of logging out of FB except when actively viewing the feed, for precisely this reason---I didn't want FB tracking me across browsing other sites. (The FB-hosted comment systems were actually the proximate worry, as well as the Like button.)

But that was my half-thought-through answer. Of course they're perfectly able to track me even without being logged in.[0] So the real answer is I need to be sure I'm not loading cross-site img and iframes... My Omniweb install I'd already configured to do that, but setting up proper privacy countermeasures on my Firefox install just jumped way up the priority list.

[0] http://panopticlick.eff.org/

Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures

#19
Before we spend too much time attacking Facebook over this, let's try and think of possible reasons why this might be not an "evil" move. No need to go out of our way to conclude "omg they're evil stealing our privacy".

Firstly, what if they just don't want to confuse users? I see people confused all the time of when you need to click and when you need to double-click, every time I see someone using the computer — I'm sure I do this myself, too. What does allowing someone to introduce uncertainty as to what's required here do, especially when their click-through buttons look just like Facebook's normal ones on other sites? I'd say it'd just confuse people. I don't have an issue with Facebook doing that, I'd actually rather have them enforce, this, so you know what is going on when you see a standard Like button.

(As a few other comments have noted, just replacing the button with a custom-styled one would solve this issue. It'd also solve user confusion, since it no longer appears to be Facebook requiring a double click.)

So, maybe they're not just after destroying privacy, after all? Maybe?

(I don't work for Facebook, or even know anyone who does. I just like to try and see both sides of something like this.)

Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures

#20
post #9

Facebook better wake up and realize that especially thanks to companies like them and their failure to self-regulate and respect privacy values outside the US, using Like-buttons for tracking is likely to become illegal in the EU and many other places in the next five years. Technically, one could argue that they already violate existing laws, but incidents like these will make absolutely sure that these practices wi…

Google claims that they do not use or keep this information for anything. When they talk about for debugging purposes, they probably mean their web access logs.

http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/static.py?page=guide.cs&...

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