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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

#51

Post by cpeterso »

JonnieCache wrote: post #20
Periodic wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a few problems with the blocking when actually going to the sites in question. I believe I had to unblock Google Plus, Google Analytics and Facebook when actually visiting those sites. However, I'm happy that most of the time it prevents the annoying features of a page from loading.

I've never had that problem. That'd be a pretty big flaw in ghostery if that was the case.

I've had problems with Ghostery blocking cookies and web bugs that prevent some Flash videos on YouTube, Hulu, and the New York Times from playing.

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

#52

Post by cpeterso »

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.

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.

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

#53

Post by cpeterso »

randomdata wrote: post #47
gord wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If users must visit social websites like Facebook in privacy mode in separate browsers, perhaps they should rethink whether they should be using Facebook at all.

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

#54

Post by code_duck »

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.

Chrome, Chromium and Safari absolutely don't share the same cookies on Mac OSX. This is easily verifiable. Not sure about other browsers... (what other browsers?).

I think you're referring to other applications which embed Safari's rendering engine. I wouldn't really call those browsers.

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

#55

Post by mkjones »

jr299 wrote: post #35
mkjones wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

In my limited understanding it's the difference between the webkit engine that OS X provides to developers to use, as opposed to Chrome which probably does something different in that regard. Besides site-specific browsers, there are plenty of makeshift OS X tools that implement their own built in browser, and these applications do indeed share cookies with Safari. The easiest way to test this is with Safari and any…

Ah yes, you're right. I remember old versions of Spotify doing this, and it always confused me.

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

#56

Post by [deleted] »

cpeterso wrote: post #49
101001011 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[deleted]

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

#58

Post by modeless »

The hypocrisy of news sites decrying Facebook's tracking while putting Like buttons on every page is palpable. (There are no less than five different Facebook widgets on this article's page, plus multiple Twitter and Google+ buttons.) The reality is that website owners are the ones sending Facebook this data.

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

#59

Post by americandesi333 »

rhizome wrote: post #45
americandesi333 wrote: post #39

Question- 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!

When you say 'browser bars' I am thinking of an address bar in browsers today. Is that what you are referring to?

I am thinking of something that does not interact with the user but captures some of their web usage based on their consent. Would love to share it with the community when its ready!

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

#60

Post by rhizome »

americandesi333 wrote: post #59
rhizome wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

When you say 'browser bars' I am thinking of an address bar in browsers today. Is that what you are referring to? I am thinking of something that does not interact with the user but captures some of their web usage based on their consent. Would love to share it with the community when its ready!

Nope, I mean browser bars from the early-mid 2000s. Comet Cursor, HotBar, and other adware companies that were the Groupon of their day. Lots of deal site plugins used these kinds of plugins to do a kind of rudimentary tracking. You got some..."thing"..and they would have this snippet of js that submitted your clicked urls to their servers. Same as it ever was.
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