Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures

#41

Post by beaumartinez » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 4:57 PM UTC

Estragon wrote: post #10

yuvadam wrote: 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…

Corresponding blocks are already in the EasyPrivacy list. https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easyprivacy.txt

I don't think they're as comprehensive. Regarding Facebook, it only has

    ||facebook.com/campaign/impression.php?
    ||facebook.com/js/conversions/tracking.js
    ||pixel.facebook.com^

Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures

#42

Post by baby » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 5:01 PM UTC

I was doing it on my website, I never had any problems with facebook.

Actually, I had other problems with them, and what they did is just plainly banned my application and blocked my website from using facebook API.

Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures

#43

Post by alexqgb » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 5:06 PM UTC

nikcub wrote: post #38

cletus wrote: post #35

This is a non-story for the reasons stated but a story for other reasons. It's standard that widget publishers require to use their widget "as is". That's basically what Facebook is saying. Not only do you not know what any custom modifications will necessarily do but it's a completely valid argument that you want a consistent user experience with your widget. As for user tracking, this is basically an inevitable byp…

> But Facebook's track record seems to be to befuddle the user and trick or opt them into sharing things wider than they understand or want. Just like Google did with Buzz That was such a clusterfuck that for most people Google is in the same bucket as Facebook when it comes to 'caring about user privacy'

I never considered any of FB privacy curtailments to be 'clusterfucks' in the sense that they involved Buzz-level incompetence, bad planning, or lack of foresight.

To the contrary, I always felt FB knew exactly what it was doing, and was operating in a very calculated way. Three steps forward and (maybe) one step back.

Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures

#44

Post by alexqgb » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 5:16 PM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #25

mypov wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to add that contrary to your impression we too value privacy in USA.

To some extent, though we've been less active in doing anything about it. In part we tend to be less keen than Europeans on having the government regulate these kinds of things, but the various private-sector and non-profit initiatives (like TRUSTe) that are supposed to fill the gap have been fairly ineffectual.

Unlike Germans - who had the Statsi to contend with, and before that the SS - Americans have never been exposed to a genuine, law-unto-itself, every-phoneline-tapped, free-to-kidnap-torture-and-kill secret police force.

One of the clearest lessons learned is that once these things take root, they are incredibly hard to dislodge. When they do go, it's only due to truly cataclysmic change. What naive Americans may regard as absurd hyper-sensitivity or a hopeless lack of technical sophistication is often an acute awareness that never letting it happen again means banning a lot of stuff that young innocents casually dismiss "as just being how the internet works".

Evgeny Morozov (author of "The Net Delusion" http://amzn.to/nOOxzQ) observes that casual openness is exactly how the web can be used to work against you. He makes the point that while folks safely ensconced in California should be grateful for their freedom from truly abusive government, they should also be a lot more sensitive to the concerns - and outright trauma - still found in places that haven't been so lucky.

Of course, I'm over-simplifying his argument a bit. If you want a more complete (and much more entertaining) introduction, RSA did an especially good animation of a talk he gave, which you can see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk8x3V-sUgU

Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures

#45

Post by hautemechanic » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 5:27 PM UTC

lliiffee wrote: post #15

jerhewet wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Brian Kennish's disconnect extension/plugin for FF, Chrome, and Safari (available at http://disconnect.me/) very neatly does this for all of the major social networks.

Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures

#46

Post by Hawramani » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 5:30 PM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #34

mypov wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to add that contrary to your impression we too value privacy in USA.

Consider the massive usage of Facebook and Twitter, the lack of outrage over the warrantless wiretapping scandal (running for 10.5 years now), easily available voter records (see e.g. the backstory behind Latanya Sweeney's original identifiability study), and lack of public comments about requiring ISPs to store all session information for a long time - I would say that is strong evidence that USA as a nation does no…

Or the fact that all ATT (and possibly Verizon) traffic goes through the NSA.

Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures

#47

Post by hautemechanic » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 5:32 PM UTC

alextingle wrote: post #22

blahedo wrote: post #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 eve…

I just use a totally different browser for Facebook.

This doesn't help as much as you'd hope.

When you are using your non-FB browser and visit a website with the FB buttons installed, FB gets click data about you.

You need to use a blocking extension in your non-FB browser in order to effectively implement your technique.

Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures

#48

Post by calbear81 » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 5:36 PM UTC

I love the privacy "oh no they're selling our data!" paranoia that people still have without considering WHY and what legitimate reasons Facebook has for sending back data when a Like button is implemented.

First, they are a SOCIAL network, this data helps them figure out the engagement level with different brands that participate on the Facebook social platform. Second, in this case, the use of 2-click solution creates a disconnect with the expected behavior of the Facebook Like widget which means users going across different sites will not know whether they need to make one or two clicks to enable a "Like". Third, when you don't use the Facebook Like widget, you don't get any insight into your connections with your social graph unless you click on the Like button which defeats the purpose of being able to see that "4 of your friends like this".

There are real privacy concerns that we should consider but I'm tired of reading EU Privacy office statements that show a lack of understanding of how the web works and without regard to the impact to the monetization ecosystem which is the lifeblood of many web publishers. What bothers me more is that there's a lack of consideration that there are legitimate reasons a certain level of data is collected in order to make the web more social.

Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures

#49

Post by rabidsnail » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 5:36 PM UTC

alexqgb wrote: post #43

nikcub wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But Facebook's track record seems to be to befuddle the user and trick or opt them into sharing things wider than they understand or want. Just like Google did with Buzz That was such a clusterfuck that for most people Google is in the same bucket as Facebook when it comes to 'caring about user privacy'

I never considered any of FB privacy curtailments to be 'clusterfucks' in the sense that they involved Buzz-level incompetence, bad planning, or lack of foresight. To the contrary, I always felt FB knew exactly what it was doing, and was operating in a very calculated way. Three steps forward and (maybe) one step back.

Beacon?

Re: Facebook doesn't like privacy countermeasures

#50

Post by igy » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 5:37 PM UTC

FJCruiser79 wrote: post #6

maeon3 wrote: post #3

I forgot how when I click a like button on a foreign page, face book is keeping data about what pages I am visiting and (who,what,when,where,how) and is selling that click data about me to the highest bidder (and I cant turn it off) to advertisers or worse government agencies doing warrent-less surveillance. I'm never clicking a facebook like button again until I can turn off user website tracking.

By 'selling that click data about me' you realize that the only monetization tool Facebook has is a anonymized and aggregated ads tool...it doesn't sell click data.

I find there's a general perception (especially Slashdot) that this isn't the case, I'm not sure why given that Facebook's been fairly explicit about it in the past