It sucks that Facebook can get away with this but services like KISSMetrics and ad networks get sued for tracking users...even though that's what the goal of analytics is, whereas Facebook's job is to provide a social network that protects its users' data.
Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave
41–50 of 72 posts
Re: Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave
#42The 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…
Yup. You are making your own future. As the enablers, your choices are guiding what these companies can do. Zuckerberg's ethics (lack thereof) are well-known. But the upper management of Facebook, their lawyers, their financiers, the folks who buy access to the personal data, they cannot write code. You are not just some code monkey drone, following instructions from your boss or taking feature requests from naive end-users, _your_ choices, _your_ ethics, make a difference.
What was it that Dennis Ricthie said about his move to Bell Labs? Something like "It was 1968 and working on military projects just didn't feel right." He went on to make an enormous contribution and, we hope, preserved his peace of mind at the same time. You will never regret taking the high road. Just an opinion.
Re: Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave
#43It sucks that Facebook can get away with this but services like KISSMetrics and ad networks get sued for tracking users...even though that's what the goal of analytics is, whereas Facebook's job is to provide a social network that protects its users' data.
Seems like a distinction without difference. If Facebook weren't doing this on their own they would very likely be working with someone like KISSMetrics.
Re: Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave
#44Wait, how is this even technically possible? Sure, Facebook can see sites you visit which use Facebook Connect in some form, but can they actually "create a running log of the web pages that each of its 800 million or so members has visited during the previous 90 days" like the article claims?
When your browser requests the like button from FB's servers, the request includes a session cookie, and the referer header indicating which page the like button was loaded from. Super easy to log, though it does generate a boat-load of data.
Re: Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave
#45Question- Would people be more willing to let a platform track browsing activity if there was 100% transparency? Asking this question for the startup that we are working on, where we want to get permission from users to follow their certain activities- which is directly applicable to the platform value.
It's hard to say without seeing it. Implementation is everything, but opt-in-wise, it sounds like you're describing browser bars. Maybe it's time to resurrect browser bars for the social age? :) Good luck!
Re: Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave
#46This is why I visit Facebook in one browser, G* in another, and everything else in yet a third.
It's much easier to just use Adblock to block third party code from Facebook and others when viewing web pages.
Re: Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Webkits share cookies = ouch.. so you really need a VM. New browser feature - open this site in a temp VM.
These days, most browsers come with a private browsing feature, which will dump your cookies, caches (for etag tracking), etc. when you're done.
Re: Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave
#48No Script + RequestPolicy + AdBlock ftw.
This combo makes your browsing a little frustrating, but very educational. Try it, even for a day and be amazed at how many sites load content and scripts from 8, 10, or more unrelated domains.
I gave up trying to keep an up-to-date host file for all the web beacon/scam urls. I just vet requests now as they occur. You wanna believe it has changed my surfing habits.
Re: Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave
#49The 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…
Yup. You are making your own future. As the enablers, your choices are guiding what these companies can do. Zuckerberg's ethics (lack thereof) are well-known. But the upper management of Facebook, their lawyers, their financiers, the folks who buy access to the personal data, they cannot write code. You are not just some code monkey drone, following instructions from your boss or taking feature requests from naive en…
I am reminded of Pigdog's 2002 open letter/rant to the Sony engineers who wrote the CD DRM code that would brick iMacs.
WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE! ;)
"d00d, Quit being a FUCKING ASS": http://www.pigdog.org/auto/software_jihad/link/2581.html
Re: Facebook Privacy: Site Confirms It Tracks You After You Leave
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not a web dev so I'm a bit puzzled by the social buttons everywhere. How often do people actually click them? To what extent can they drive traffic to your site? I've often wondered if they're a bit like QR codes in that a small portion of people are enamored with them but few people actually use them.
Definitely. I rarely bother with Facebook any more , but when I want to share something, copy and paste is not hard. The "social buttons" don't solve a problem, IMO. actually, what started the decline was the very subject of this article. I don't like Facebook watching where I go, and I started putting Facebook in another browser; naturally, I'm on Facebook less because it's harder to get to.
> I started putting Facebook in another browser
In theory, using a separate browser is not adequate protection from tracking. The Flash Player's "Shared Objects" (aka Flash cookies) are stored in a common directory, so the same Flash data is accessible from any browser running as the same user. I do not believe Facebook's tracking is this nefarious, but the method would be quite easy to implement.