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Logged In or Out, Facebook Is Watching You
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."
Only if you have a Facebook account.
I'm shocked that you're shocked. Or even expect me to be mildly surprised that this is happening.
The only difference is that this is supposed to be a larger company and therefore better than the millions of smaller opt out pipe dreams out there?
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
The title has a built-in "In Soviet Russia joke.
Face your daemons!
"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."
I should have known there was a problem when I was signing up and saw this:
[ ] Opt out of Beacon(tm) on-line tracking when logged into Facebook; opt in to Lighthouse(tm) on-line tracking when logged out of Facebook.
The enemies of Democracy are
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!
Facebook is currently affiliated with the following sites:
* Art.com
* Blockbuster
* Bluefly
* CBS Interactive
* eBay
* ExpoTV
* Fandango
* Gamefly.com
* Kiva, Kongregate
* LiveNation
* Mercantila
* NY Times
* Overstock.com
* Redlight Mgmt
* Seamless Web
* Six Apart
* STA Travel
* TheKnot
* Travelocity
* Viagogo
http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=57
The first bloody Google result |: |
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=facebook-affiliated+sites&spell=1
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I just wish I could delete my facebook account. It's actually close to impossible, first you have to delete all your information (wall posts, friends, etc.), and then they'll delete your account. Very, very time consuming. But I doubt any of that info is REALLY gone.
TFA's source [corrected] indicates FB gives their affiliates javascript to include in the page that connects to a FB server for cookie exchange. Pretty sneaky. I wonder if google does something like that with google analytics.
Corrected Link! This is why one should not slashdot before one's midday coffee. Please mod parent down, or something. That's a very small server and it will die.
Not quite, your email address also gets used as a foreign key between Facebook and it's affiliates.
Fry all your cookies, but if you share an email address between your Facebook account and someone else, say Amazon, they can connect the dots that way.
Thankfully I didn't register my Facebook account with my Hotmail only-for-the-porn account. That could've made for some interesting advertising though...
It was already posted on Slashdot. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/03/0656205 That's two dupes in a row guys! Care to go for three?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Let's see, what do we call it when someone follows someone around to see where they go, their tastes, who they know, etc, etc.
Yeah, that's right, it's STALKING!
When you restrict those activities to the internet, it's cyber-stalking.
Why is stalking suddenly OK if you're trying to sell stuff? It certainly doesn't feel any less creepy to the person being stalked.
The fact that these things are done in secret and too often in spite of public denials tells me that they know at some level what they're doing is unwelcome and wrong.
If they want to cyber-stalk in exchange for a free service, then it's not REALLY free, it just happens to have a non-monetary price. Let them be honest about the price and then the users can decide for themselves how acceptable the deal is.
They actually use your facebook cookie, which would contain your school email, to track you. So just delete your cookies and you should be OK.
I've often thought about the various people who have made a fortune or are about to make a fortune from online properties.
Jason Calacanis, Kevin Rose, the Flickr people, etc.
Usually I think to myself, that's awesome that these people were able to work hard and see their vision to the end and make a living from it.
When I think of Zuckerberg, I think the exact opposite. Fuck that guy. I've always felt like he sleezed his way to where he is, and stories like this only reinforce that opinion.
(prepared to be modded troll...)
Name...That...Autocomplete!
With Facebook's protection of minors... I wonder if them tracking the habits of minors could get them in trouble...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
They also can only track you if you use a computer!
What might have royally pissed off others was that when facebook asked for the new member's valid email address, it implied or outright expected them to provide to the f/b interface the VALID PASSWORD OF THE VALID EMAIL ACCOUNT.
This royally inFURIATED me. All they needed to say was Give us your valid email of choice, and reply within 5 minutes of receiving it and supply the code we give you, or you'll have to redo this and still try within 5 minutes to validate yourself.
They had NO f*cking business structuring it in such a way that MILLIONS of users would blindly or hopelessly supply their gmail, yahoo, msn, and/or other passwords through a facebook conduit.
Can you IMAGINE how much snooping could be done if facebook were compelled by law or court order to submit subscribtion/memberhship application logs to various agencies that don't want to actually leave traces of intel-snooping? All they have to do is notice whether or not the user is online or not, then log in as them, quickly look at non-viewable things, then log out. Only if friends and bots are somehow tracking friends login/logout activity can anyone be tipped off that something might be amiss.
Even without the conspiracy theory stuff, facebook should NEVER have culled or duped people into giving facebook their other account's passwords, nevermind the fact that there are other means by which other parties could steal or surreptitiously obtain a targeted user's password.
I cannot remember what I did to foil that frackin' attempt, but I think I did foil it.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"