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Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave

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Re: Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave

#21

Post by Periodic »

The part that scares me is that we, as web designers/developers/owners, are complicit in this. We are the ones who are putting social buttons on every page. We love this functionality, but they aren't giving it to us for free. We are trading them our user's information and browsing habits.

I'm not worried about the ethics of Facebook. I don't think a site like Facebook should be prevented from doing this openly. I'm worried about whether I can ethically include all these social plugins knowing that they will, in my opinion, invade my users' privacy.

Re: Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave

#22

Post by sp332 »

esk wrote: post #15
alain94040 wrote: post #10

To be fair, Google is doing the exact same thing with adwords and adsense.

Doesn't Google Analytics also phone home? Google's tracking is far more widespread than Facebook's if that's the case.

Google Analytics seems somehow less harmful than AdSense. Almost every big website has some kind of analytics running. I assume that GA data isn't sold to advertisers, but I'm not sure.

Re: Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave

#23

Post by rblion »

Big Brother Blue is always watching.

It is becoming more and more obvious that we are nothing more than a pile of data to facebook, they don't look at us human beings who have a need for respect and privacy, but as potential data and revenue. I have always gotten the feeling that they think we are 'too dumb' to catch on, it's only a matter of time until the bubble bursts. They may still be a billion dollar company but the respect and loyalty will shift when something greater is envisioned and realized.

Re: Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave

#24

Post by brador »

JonnieCache wrote: post #14
thematt wrote: post #11

Would Ghostery be successful at blocking this? http://www.ghostery.com/

Yep. It blocks the Like buttons and other stupid widgets, which is how the cookies get sent. That also has the pleasant side-effect of drastically decreasing load times. I highly recommend it. Be aware that it does block disqus by default, I usually whitelist that one.

Would using noScript with firefox work?

Re: Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave

#26

Post by stingraycharles »

sp332 wrote: post #22
esk wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Google Analytics also phone home? Google's tracking is far more widespread than Facebook's if that's the case.

Google Analytics seems somehow less harmful than AdSense. Almost every big website has some kind of analytics running. I assume that GA data isn't sold to advertisers, but I'm not sure.

I think this might be of interest to you:

http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer...

GA users can choose to "share" their data with Google, and this page describes the advantages users will get if they choose do to so.

Re: Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave

#27

Post by icebraining »

Periodic wrote: post #21

The part that scares me is that we, as web designers/developers/owners, are complicit in this. We are the ones who are putting social buttons on every page. We love this functionality, but they aren't giving it to us for free. We are trading them our user's information and browsing habits. I'm not worried about the ethics of Facebook. I don't think a site like Facebook should be prevented from doing this openly. I'm…

Use one of those proxy buttons which only load the actual Facebook button when the user clicks/hovers. Unfortunately I can't find it right now, but I think it was posted here on HN a while ago.

EDIT: Here is a Slashdot discussion[1] about a German newspaper who did that, and here's[2] the link to their jQuery plugin who does just that: only load FB code when the user clicks on the button. It's in German, but translation services are good enough nowadays.

EDIT2: And here's[3] the HN discussion.

[1]: http://slashdot.org/story/11/09/03/0115241/Heises-Two-Clicks...

[2]: http://www.heise.de/extras/socialshareprivacy/

[3]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2957119

Re: Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave

#28

Post by sequoia »

brador wrote: post #24
JonnieCache wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. It blocks the Like buttons and other stupid widgets, which is how the cookies get sent. That also has the pleasant side-effect of drastically decreasing load times. I highly recommend it. Be aware that it does block disqus by default, I usually whitelist that one.

Would using noScript with firefox work?

Yes. Ghostery is much more targeted however, it blocks scripts based on a blacklist (of trackers) rather than blocking ALL scripts. Ghostery is much more user/non-techie friendly; the only time you need to mess with it is:

a) You want to allow some service (I allow disqus, for example): disable blocking for the service b) A site requires facebook/twitter to log in, or you trust the site: whitelist the site (allows all tracking scripts)

I do wish it had a "allow by domain" so I could allow e.g. just facebook on just turntable.fm so I can log in, but not allow all of ttfn's other trackers.

Works fine on abc.com ;) http://screencast.com/t/01D8EF6AH5ij

Re: Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave

#29

Post by icebraining »

kogir wrote: post #17

Just disable reading and writing of third party cookies. I've been using this option in Chrome for quite some time. Hint: Facebook is not alone in doing this.

Cookies aren't the only way to be tracked, unfortunately. I don't know if it still works, but some sites were using custom ETags to track users.

Re: Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave

#30

Post by mkjones »

jr299 wrote: post #16
untog wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cookies do not cross browsers. If he's using a second browser, Facebook cannot read the cookies set in the first browser. They could use some IP matching logic or something, but it would be prone to a lot of false positives.

I believe this isn't always the case. If you're using multiple browsers in OS X all built on Webkit for instance, they share the same cookie store. Firefox and multiple firefox profiles isolate cookie storage and I also use Fluid on OS X to build site-specific browsers. The paid version offers a feature to isolate cookie storage within each app.

> If you're using multiple browsers in OS X all built on Webkit for instance, they share the same cookie store.

Where are you getting this? Safari and Chrome (both built on webkit) definitely do not share cookie stores on OS X.

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