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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

#51

That's pretty neat, I wish they'd publish on how they did this so others could use it. Sounds like another great way to remove friction for the user, always a great thing.

Well...except people generally only appreciate these features when they're allowed explicitly. It's kind of unsettling having a website spontaneously know your activity elsewhere on the browser. Even well-intended, it can come off as tracking data.

Re: Facebook detects if you are logged in Gmail

#52
Question...has anyone noticed if this relationship is reciprocal? I keep an eye on my Gmail ads to see how far along they track my activity while I am logged in and browsing, but has anyone noticed Gmail ads showing content that wouldn't be there without placement or data from Facebook? Obviously this doesn't apply if you sandbox Facebook as some commenters have, but if you use both in one browser I mean. I may use Firebug and see if the two communicate while I'm logged in...

Re: Facebook detects if you are logged in Gmail

#53

That's pretty neat, I wish they'd publish on how they did this so others could use it. Sounds like another great way to remove friction for the user, always a great thing.

Well...except people generally only appreciate these features when they're allowed explicitly. It's kind of unsettling having a website spontaneously know your activity elsewhere on the browser. Even well-intended, it can come off as tracking data.

It is explicit, apparently FB is using OpenID which is information supplied by you linking the two accounts, completely opt-in. Besides, it's hardly tracking you with this feature, a boolean: is user logged in to Gmail? Yes|No

If yes, user can be verified quickly and reset their password in an easier fashion for them. Facebook is trying to make things smoother and not making you jump into your email to click a link or copy some token id or something. This is good UX.

Re: Facebook detects if you are logged in Gmail

#54
It must be using oAuth. I think it was a mistake in the oAuth protocol to not build in a default, short, expiration for secret keys. Now users (most of them non-tech savvy) have to rely on visiting the apps page and manually removing authorizations.

Edit: I just profiled the process, and it is using OpenID. It pops open a new window that will check your OpenID login and call back with a success and will close the window if it is. I had to slow down my connection to actually see it.

Re: Facebook detects if you are logged in Gmail

#55

I bought http://fluidapp.com/ just for Facebook. Now I have a nice separate window for browsing Facebook and nothing but Facebook. Separate cookie store is awesome.

I like the idea, but I'm not sure if I can trust this level of sand-boxing. Does it also use a separate cache (web history, etags, image cache, web cache, etc)? a separate Flash storage? Silverlight storage? HTML5 storage? If any of them are shared, something along the lines of Evercookie would have no problem maintaining cookies across the apps.

Re: Facebook detects if you are logged in Gmail

#57
post #55

I bought http://fluidapp.com/ just for Facebook. Now I have a nice separate window for browsing Facebook and nothing but Facebook. Separate cookie store is awesome.

I like the idea, but I'm not sure if I can trust this level of sand-boxing. Does it also use a separate cache (web history, etags, image cache, web cache, etc)? a separate Flash storage? Silverlight storage? HTML5 storage? If any of them are shared, something along the lines of Evercookie would have no problem maintaining cookies across the apps.

Cache is completely separate, Flash and Silverlight (and plugins in general) aren't sandboxed, which is why I deactivated them for my Facebook Browser. (no more embedded youtube videos, but they open in my main browser, works just as well)

Re: Facebook detects if you are logged in Gmail

#58
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

What i am saying is that you are forced to re-login to prevent someone stealing your facebook account when he has access to your computer. given that most people stay logged into their gmail, i think this would actually be helpful

Re: Facebook detects if you are logged in Gmail

#59

I bought http://fluidapp.com/ just for Facebook. Now I have a nice separate window for browsing Facebook and nothing but Facebook. Separate cookie store is awesome.

Doesn't fluid share the same default cookie store as Safari?

It definitely does on my version, which is 6 months old, but it caused me to not use it.

Re: Facebook detects if you are logged in Gmail

#60

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.

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