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Facebook Beacon Privacy Issues Worse Than Previously Thought?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the can't-win-guys dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Further developments in the Facebook Beacon affair ... According to PC World, a Computer Associates researcher claims that Beacon, when installed on participating sites, is sending data about users' activity back to Facebook, even when a user is logged out of Facebook - despite Facebook's claims to the contrary."

2 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. Is *that* what that was? by brogdon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was playing some rinky-dink flash game on kongregate.com and all of the sudden a little DHTML window panned up from the bottom of the browser and said "Tower Defense has added a story to your Facebook profile."

    At that point I had three questions:

    1) What is a flash game site doing talking to Facebook?
    2) How do you know what my Facebook ID is?
    3) Where the fuck do you get off?

    I had to go several menus deep in Facebook to figure out how to opt-out of this crap. I haven't been back to kongregate since. Absolute crap.

    --


    This tagline is umop apisdn.
  2. Re:Not sure how this works by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Probably 'web bugs'. These are usually 1x1 pixel images, placed on the 3rd party page but served from Facebook's domain. The web bug can then access all your Facebook cookies and pass details onto the 3rd party site.

    A trick borrowed from spammongers, who embed these things in emails to vaildate email addresses.