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What’s Not Included in Facebook’s “Download Your Data”

wired.com

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Re: What’s Not Included in Facebook’s “Download Your Data”

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, incognito mode uses the same temporary cookies folder as regular chrome, so FB looks at this folder if incognito is open in one window while FB is being used in another.

Are you sure about that? Wouldn't it mean that all third party trackers could continue to track you while in incognito mode? How could it be called incognito mode if sites can still read your non-incognito cookies?

I'm 95% confident. And yes, I think it does mean that. The trackers have to be active in a non-incognito window for it to work. It reads the shared temporary cookie folder.

Re: What’s Not Included in Facebook’s “Download Your Data”

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about that? Wouldn't it mean that all third party trackers could continue to track you while in incognito mode? How could it be called incognito mode if sites can still read your non-incognito cookies?

I'm 95% confident. And yes, I think it does mean that. The trackers have to be active in a non-incognito window for it to work. It reads the shared temporary cookie folder.

If incognito mode is that broken in Chrome, and still allows sites that are open in normal tabs to track you, that would be very newsworthy.

Re: What’s Not Included in Facebook’s “Download Your Data”

#83

Not covered here: it does not really export your social graph. Just a list of names. No way to easily import that into contacts etc. This is making quitting Facebook time-consuming, but I'm getting there. Similarly with birthdays, although it's quite easy to work around that via their calendar link.

> No way to easily import that into contacts etc. This is making quitting Facebook time-consuming, but I'm getting there. Also, IIRC, all the photos are resized smaller and recompressed, while the full-res versions are still accessible through the Facebook website. This also makes it harder to quit if 1) you don't have the original photos and 2) don't want to live with the unnecessary sacrifice of quality. Facebook r…

> since the download might be a prelude to an irreversible account deletion.

Is it not one of their aims to make it always reversible?

Re: What’s Not Included in Facebook’s “Download Your Data”

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 95% confident. And yes, I think it does mean that. The trackers have to be active in a non-incognito window for it to work. It reads the shared temporary cookie folder.

If incognito mode is that broken in Chrome, and still allows sites that are open in normal tabs to track you, that would be very newsworthy.

agreed

Re: What’s Not Included in Facebook’s “Download Your Data”

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about that? Wouldn't it mean that all third party trackers could continue to track you while in incognito mode? How could it be called incognito mode if sites can still read your non-incognito cookies?

I'm 95% confident. And yes, I think it does mean that. The trackers have to be active in a non-incognito window for it to work. It reads the shared temporary cookie folder.

link to proof of concept?

edit: tried it on chromium 66: doesn't work.

steps to reproduce:

1. open new (non-private) tab, go to http://httpbin.org/cookies/set?k1=v1&k2=v2

2. check http://httpbin.org/cookies/, the two cookies should be there, and if you check the dev console, the expiry date is 1970-01-01 - 1 second. firefox says it's "until end of session".

3. open new private tab, go to http://httpbin.org/cookies

4. cookies from above do not show up.

Re: What’s Not Included in Facebook’s “Download Your Data”

#86

"But 'Download Your Data' hardly tells you everything Facebook knows about you. Among the information not included: - information Facebook collects about your browsing history; - information Facebook collects about the apps you visit and your activity within those apps; - the advertisers who uploaded your contact information to Facebook more than two months earlier; - ads that you interacted with more than two months…

PSA: Facebook looks at what websites you visit in an incognito window, provided that the incognito window is open the same time as a regular browser.

no it doesn't. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16908185

Re: What’s Not Included in Facebook’s “Download Your Data”

#87

"But 'Download Your Data' hardly tells you everything Facebook knows about you. Among the information not included: - information Facebook collects about your browsing history; - information Facebook collects about the apps you visit and your activity within those apps; - the advertisers who uploaded your contact information to Facebook more than two months earlier; - ads that you interacted with more than two months…

- the data that Facebook collected about you from various other sources, e.g., data brokers Mr. Zuckerberg and other Facebook staff assert: "We do not sell data." Does Facebook acquire/purchase data about people from other sources, e.g., data brokers, and then combine it with (a) the highly personal data people voluntarily submit to Facebook and (b) the highly personal behavioural data people consent to allow Faceboo…

[deleted]

Re: What’s Not Included in Facebook’s “Download Your Data”

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If incognito mode is that broken in Chrome, and still allows sites that are open in normal tabs to track you, that would be very newsworthy.

agreed

I had to know the answer, so I wrote a quick script to test it. It appears that incognito windows can't read cookies from normal windows. I've linked to the source code there. If I've missed anything, let me know.

https://cookiechecker.netlify.com/

Re: What’s Not Included in Facebook’s “Download Your Data”

#89
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PSA: Facebook looks at what websites you visit in an incognito window, provided that the incognito window is open the same time as a regular browser.

no it doesn't. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16908185

Yes, it does. And your client side “steps to reproduce” do not, in fact, reproduce server-side client fingerprinting to correlate between two disconnected browser identities.

Re: What’s Not Included in Facebook’s “Download Your Data”

#90
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No way to easily import that into contacts etc. This is making quitting Facebook time-consuming, but I'm getting there. Also, IIRC, all the photos are resized smaller and recompressed, while the full-res versions are still accessible through the Facebook website. This also makes it harder to quit if 1) you don't have the original photos and 2) don't want to live with the unnecessary sacrifice of quality. Facebook r…

> since the download might be a prelude to an irreversible account deletion. Is it not one of their aims to make it always reversible?

that's what disabling your account is for, but deletion is deletion.
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