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Facebooks crawls every page recorded by its tracking pixel

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Facebooks crawls every page recorded by its tracking pixel

#21

Post by tzahola »

radicalbyte wrote: post #15
detaro wrote: post #11

If security of sensitive information depends on tokens in the URL, don't just give those URLs to a third party , how would that ever be a reasonable thing to do? (especially since the third party apparently hasn't given you any guarantees on how they treat that, otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation?) Do your users, your broken software and yourself a favor and don't put Facebook tracking crap everywhere.

That's because our industry is full of hopelessly under qualified people who somehow manage to create software by randomly throwing together bits of code from stackoverflow / books and tweaking it until it "works".

You mean "hopelessly", right?

Re: Facebooks crawls every page recorded by its tracking pixel

#22

Post by mosselman »

d33 wrote: post #18
K0nserv wrote: post #5

> 1. they are crawling potentially sensitive information granted by links with tokens Don't put Facebook tracking on sensitive pages. Actually as a service to your users don't put it anywhere where it doesn't add value. > 2. they are triggering potentially harmful and/or confusing actions in your website by repeating links They only perform idempotent[0]* requests which should not have any negative effect if performe…

GET is only idempotent in theory. Way too many people abuse GET when creating websites.

I believe that is the point that @K0nserv is making. The 'abuse' part I mean.

Re: Facebooks crawls every page recorded by its tracking pixel

#23

Post by dotdi »

rock_hard wrote: post #14
dotdi wrote: post #3

Shocking! Abuse of power and shady tracking techniques by Facebook? Unheard of! Seriously, this cannot be surprising after learning that the Messenger app listens to everything you do, all the time. That's just off the top of my head. They are doing this and much more.

Please get your facts straight before posting here. https://www.wired.com/story/facebooks-listening-smartphone-m...

I've read the article before, and it's not convincing.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but the article lists some forms of how it might work and reasons how it would be unfeasible. There are other ways this could work, IMHO.

Re: Facebooks crawls every page recorded by its tracking pixel

#24

Post by pmlnr »

K0nserv wrote: post #5

> 1. they are crawling potentially sensitive information granted by links with tokens Don't put Facebook tracking on sensitive pages. Actually as a service to your users don't put it anywhere where it doesn't add value. > 2. they are triggering potentially harmful and/or confusing actions in your website by repeating links They only perform idempotent[0]* requests which should not have any negative effect if performe…

I fixed it:

Don't put tracking on sensitive pages.

Re: Facebooks crawls every page recorded by its tracking pixel

#25

Post by jrimbault »

radicalbyte wrote: post #15
detaro wrote: post #11

If security of sensitive information depends on tokens in the URL, don't just give those URLs to a third party , how would that ever be a reasonable thing to do? (especially since the third party apparently hasn't given you any guarantees on how they treat that, otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation?) Do your users, your broken software and yourself a favor and don't put Facebook tracking crap everywhere.

That's because our industry is full of hopelessly under qualified people who somehow manage to create software by randomly throwing together bits of code from stackoverflow / books and tweaking it until it "works".

I feel many "web agencies" don't even have devs (or any technical people), they just sell wordpress installations.

Re: Facebooks crawls every page recorded by its tracking pixel

#26

Post by icebraining »

eesmith wrote: post #20
d33 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GET is only idempotent in theory. Way too many people abuse GET when creating websites.

As an example of the problem, see the "Issues and criticism" of the related topic "Link prefetching" in Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_prefetching#Issues_and_cr... .

Almost all of those problems only apply to in-browser prefetchers, which reuse the user's session and connection.

Re: Facebooks crawls every page recorded by its tracking pixel

#27

Post by cup-of-tea »

K0nserv wrote: post #5

> 1. they are crawling potentially sensitive information granted by links with tokens Don't put Facebook tracking on sensitive pages. Actually as a service to your users don't put it anywhere where it doesn't add value. > 2. they are triggering potentially harmful and/or confusing actions in your website by repeating links They only perform idempotent[0]* requests which should not have any negative effect if performe…

> Actually as a service to your users don't put it anywhere where it doesn't add value.

So don't put it anywhere.

Re: Facebooks crawls every page recorded by its tracking pixel

#28

Post by K0nserv »

cup-of-tea wrote: post #27
K0nserv wrote: post #5

> 1. they are crawling potentially sensitive information granted by links with tokens Don't put Facebook tracking on sensitive pages. Actually as a service to your users don't put it anywhere where it doesn't add value. > 2. they are triggering potentially harmful and/or confusing actions in your website by repeating links They only perform idempotent[0]* requests which should not have any negative effect if performe…

> Actually as a service to your users don't put it anywhere where it doesn't add value. So don't put it anywhere.

I believe the tracking stuff comes with Like buttons and other Facebook widgets those are what I am referring to when I say "add value". But it could be argued that the tracking alone never adds value to the user.

Re: Facebooks crawls every page recorded by its tracking pixel

#29

Post by naiveai »

K0nserv wrote: post #5

> 1. they are crawling potentially sensitive information granted by links with tokens Don't put Facebook tracking on sensitive pages. Actually as a service to your users don't put it anywhere where it doesn't add value. > 2. they are triggering potentially harmful and/or confusing actions in your website by repeating links They only perform idempotent[0]* requests which should not have any negative effect if performe…

Even according to that document, idempotent methods still can update resources as long as the representation doesn't change:

> Again, this only applies to the result, not the resource itself. This still can be manipulated (like an update-timestamp, provided this information is not shared in the (current) resource representation.

This means that tracking is still could potentially affect some stuff, but honestly not by much.

Re: Facebooks crawls every page recorded by its tracking pixel

#30

Post by nukeop »

rock_hard wrote: post #14
dotdi wrote: post #3

Shocking! Abuse of power and shady tracking techniques by Facebook? Unheard of! Seriously, this cannot be surprising after learning that the Messenger app listens to everything you do, all the time. That's just off the top of my head. They are doing this and much more.

Please get your facts straight before posting here. https://www.wired.com/story/facebooks-listening-smartphone-m...

What facts? This article is full of inaccurate speculation but there are no facts in it. For example:

>To make it happen, Facebook would need to record everything your phone hears while it's on.

This assumption treated as an axiom here is false, and it makes the rest of the article inaccurate as well.

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