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Logged In or Out, Facebook Is Watching You

Posted by timothy on from the damn-addictive-scrabulous-and-cute-iris-chang dept.

kaos07 links to this ZDNet story, according to which "Researchers at software vendor CA have discovered that social networking site Facebook is able to track the buying habits of its users on affiliated third-party sites even when they are logged out of their account or have opted out of its controversial 'Beacon' tracking service. Responding to privacy concerns, Facebook has since moved to reassure users that it only tracks and publishes data about their purchases if they are both logged in to Facebook and have opted-in to having this information listed on their profile. But in 'extremely disconcerting' findings that directly contradict these assurances, researchers at CA's Security Advisory service have found that data about these transactions are sent to Facebook regardless of a user's actions."

7 of 336 comments (clear)

  1. Built-in by von_rick · · Score: 5, Funny

    The title has a built-in "In Soviet Russia joke.

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    Face your daemons!

    1. Re:Built-in by von_rick · · Score: 5, Funny

      In_Soviet_Russia jokes are never so long.

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      Face your daemons!

  2. How Dare They by jareth780 · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is an outrage! How DARE they try and sell me things! This is almost as infuriating as Vons/Safeway and their "club card", tracking my purchases to try and "Better serve me". Horsefeathers! The fact that the products I want are in stock at any given point is PROOF that they've been using my spending habits to PREDICT MY NEEDS, which goes against everything I believe in.

    When I say I want a free social networking site, it's not good enough that I not be billed directly for using it. The company hosting it must be desperately trying to sustain the bandwidth and CPU time for my constant page refreshes. At no point should they be even breaking even, let alone PROFITING from their service. Information wants to be free! Down with Big Brother! Doublethink! Free as in beer! ...What else... Oh! And my cell phone bill is too high!

    1. Re:How Dare They by Chris+Burke · · Score: 5, Funny

      This is almost as infuriating as Vons/Safeway and their "club card", tracking my purchases to try and "Better serve me". Horsefeathers! The fact that the products I want are in stock at any given point is PROOF that they've been using my spending habits to PREDICT MY NEEDS, which goes against everything I believe in.

      That's clearly not true, because I've been to Safeway plenty of times and not ONCE have they offered me a blowjob.

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      The enemies of Democracy are
  3. Re:Shocked by SleepyHappyDoc · · Score: 5, Funny

    There's a way around that. Kill your entire family, move to a different country, and insist all your new friends call you by your internet name.

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    Stasis is death. Embrace change.
  4. This is insightful too by philspear · · Score: 5, Funny

    They also can only track you if you use a computer!

  5. Re:Shocked by Grimbleton · · Score: 5, Funny

    Better solution: Be boring as hell. Works for me!