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Facebook detects if you are logged in Gmail

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Re: Facebook detects if you are logged in Gmail

#21

Not sure how they are doing this, but I have gotten tired of having to play “whack-a-mole” with FB scraping private information from my browser in other ways, so what I have done is sandboxed it: I have a separate “Facebook” account on OS X, and I assume that anything I do on that account is shared with Facebook. I don’t log into Facebook for any reason on my normal user account, and I don’t log into anything else on…

With the "Like" button littered all over the web, Facebook can still connect you to all the websites that have the Like button installed! That's why I prefer AdBlock/Privacy Filters/even blocking Facebook domains by adding entries to /etc/hosts file to prevent even even a connection to their (known) IPs.

Re: Facebook detects if you are logged in Gmail

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with all that, you would need cooperation by both Google and Facebook for the feature and it would be just as complex as simply using OAuth.

It would work on any service that allows you to share an image with one individual user.

The service would need to send out the Cross Origin Resource Sharing headers in order for the image to be accessible via and the service also needs a means for the querying server to test if a certain image is indeed the one associated with the user.

And if it was an image generated by Facebook, then Facebook must have access to the account beforehand, and there's no benefit to using this system over OAuth.

Re: Facebook detects if you are logged in Gmail

#23
post #3

I think they should have used that information differently. Given they know that you are already logged into your gmail, any visitor to your machine will therefore know how to reset the password to his advantage. Instead, they should have make a block, so that you are forced to logout of your gmail and login to your gmail to enhance security.

if they did this you might as well just go to your email and click on the link

Re: Facebook detects if you are logged in Gmail

#24
post #21

Not sure how they are doing this, but I have gotten tired of having to play “whack-a-mole” with FB scraping private information from my browser in other ways, so what I have done is sandboxed it: I have a separate “Facebook” account on OS X, and I assume that anything I do on that account is shared with Facebook. I don’t log into Facebook for any reason on my normal user account, and I don’t log into anything else on…

With the "Like" button littered all over the web, Facebook can still connect you to all the websites that have the Like button installed! That's why I prefer AdBlock/Privacy Filters/even blocking Facebook domains by adding entries to /etc/hosts file to prevent even even a connection to their (known) IPs.

I use lots of FB blocking in my regular account for that reason!

Re: Facebook detects if you are logged in Gmail

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would work on any service that allows you to share an image with one individual user.

The service would need to send out the Cross Origin Resource Sharing headers in order for the image to be accessible via and the service also needs a means for the querying server to test if a certain image is indeed the one associated with the user. And if it was an image generated by Facebook, then Facebook must have access to the account beforehand, and there's no benefit to using this system over OAuth.

> The service would need to send out the Cross Origin Resource Sharing headers in order for the image to be accessible via and the service also needs a means for the querying server to test if a certain image is indeed the one associated with the user.

// EDIT: ignore what was here, you're right.

Re: Facebook detects if you are logged in Gmail

#27
post #21

Not sure how they are doing this, but I have gotten tired of having to play “whack-a-mole” with FB scraping private information from my browser in other ways, so what I have done is sandboxed it: I have a separate “Facebook” account on OS X, and I assume that anything I do on that account is shared with Facebook. I don’t log into Facebook for any reason on my normal user account, and I don’t log into anything else on…

With the "Like" button littered all over the web, Facebook can still connect you to all the websites that have the Like button installed! That's why I prefer AdBlock/Privacy Filters/even blocking Facebook domains by adding entries to /etc/hosts file to prevent even even a connection to their (known) IPs.

I use ghostery to protect myself from this kind of tracking : http://www.ghostery.com/

Re: Facebook detects if you are logged in Gmail

#28

Not sure how they are doing this, but I have gotten tired of having to play “whack-a-mole” with FB scraping private information from my browser in other ways, so what I have done is sandboxed it: I have a separate “Facebook” account on OS X, and I assume that anything I do on that account is shared with Facebook. I don’t log into Facebook for any reason on my normal user account, and I don’t log into anything else on…

I have a Ubuntu virtual machine(VMware Player) for Facebook only. I don't see any sufficient reason to link all my online activity to my account.

Re: Facebook detects if you are logged in Gmail

#30

Not sure how they are doing this, but I have gotten tired of having to play “whack-a-mole” with FB scraping private information from my browser in other ways, so what I have done is sandboxed it: I have a separate “Facebook” account on OS X, and I assume that anything I do on that account is shared with Facebook. I don’t log into Facebook for any reason on my normal user account, and I don’t log into anything else on…

There's a comprehensive choice of browsers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers). I picked one that I knew I wouldn't need and dedicated it to my facebook usage.
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