Logging out of Facbook is not enough • Hacker News Board

Re: Logging out of Facbook is not enough

#21

Post by sneak » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 12:04 PM UTC

I said this yesterday on the original discussion.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3033475

Good that you ran with it, though, and illustrated the point.

Perhaps a better headline would have been "Facebook is still tracking you across the web even after you log out", though. Generally it's only hackers that know what "enough" means in this context, and Facebook's market is, as we all know, much much bigger than us.

Re: Logging out of Facbook is not enough

#22

Post by 1880 » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 12:08 PM UTC

dchest wrote: post #2

In Chrome 15 there's a flag (in about:flags) to disable third-party cookies from being read: Block all third-party cookies. When the option to block third-party cookies from being set is enabled, also block third-party cookies from being read. (Don't forget to activate blocking in Preferences > Under The Hood > Content Settings... > Cookies.)

But then some sites stop working, like Twitter and even some parts of Google :(

Re: Logging out of Facbook is not enough

#23

Post by sneak » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 12:09 PM UTC

I haven't looked, but I would bet any money that Google does the exact same thing, too.

Re: Logging out of Facbook is not enough

#24

Post by jnorthrop » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 12:12 PM UTC

dchest wrote: post #13

jnorthrop wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Firefox preferences go to the Privacy tab and select Use Custom Setting for History in the History section. From there you will see the check box to accept 3rd party cookies. Keep in mind this will prevent webmasters from using things like Google Analytics. Which you may want anyway but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Are you sure that setting "Accept cookies" to "off" will prevent third-party sites from reading cookies as well?

Good question and I'm not sure. I would guess that if it doesn't accept them then it wouldn't read them either. The first step in the cookie transaction would be to check whether that cookie already exists (an attempt to read the cookie). It would seem easiest to stop that process at that point based on user preferences rather that just programming it to check at the actual write time.

This is all speculation though.

Re: Logging out of Facbook is not enough

#25

Post by buro9 » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 12:14 PM UTC

These are the AdBlock Facebook rules you want:

  ||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=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net

The key is to allow FB's CDN when on FB, but to disallow it and everything else when not on FB.

Re: Logging out of Facbook is not enough

#26

Post by secoif » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 12:17 PM UTC

Hackernews is now known as Facebook news

Re: Logging out of Facbook is not enough

#27

Post by nikcub » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 12:19 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #21

I said this yesterday on the original discussion. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3033475 Good that you ran with it, though, and illustrated the point. Perhaps a better headline would have been "Facebook is still tracking you across the web even after you log out", though. Generally it's only hackers that know what "enough" means in this context, and Facebook's market is, as we all know, much much bigger than us.

not that I want to turn this into a pissing contest, but I emailed this to them on the 14th of November 2010. I emailed them again on the 12th of January this year. I have been sitting on it for that long.

I updated my post to make that clear, that this is an issue that is almost a year old.

Re: Logging out of Facbook is not enough

#28

Post by ck2 » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 12:25 PM UTC

Why should any cookie last more than 30 minutes anyway in this day and age? Make all cookies session cookies.

Also disable third-party-cookies entirely.

Re: Logging out of Facbook is not enough

#29

Post by veyron » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 12:26 PM UTC

Zakuzaa wrote: post #8

I think there's a start up opportunity - "A dead simple way to take control of your privacy". Perhaps a native tool for windows, mac and linux. Just install it, set the settings and forget it.

Expand on this more. How does this differ from privacy mode (at this point most browsers have a "InPrivate" browsing or "Incognito" or "Private" mode

Re: Logging out of Facbook is not enough

#30

Post by Zakuzaa » Sun, Sep 25, 2011, 12:48 PM UTC

veyron wrote: post #29

Zakuzaa wrote: post #8

I think there's a start up opportunity - "A dead simple way to take control of your privacy". Perhaps a native tool for windows, mac and linux. Just install it, set the settings and forget it.

Expand on this more. How does this differ from privacy mode (at this point most browsers have a "InPrivate" browsing or "Incognito" or "Private" mode

But you can't really use incognito mode all the time. It will log you out of all other 'legitimate' sites you want to be logged in forever, like Gmail.