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Facebook's 'Like This' Button Is Tracking You

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the of-course-they-are dept.

Stoobalou submitted a story about some of the most obvious research I've seen in a while ... "A researcher from a Dutch university is warning that Facebook's 'Like This' button is watching your every move. Arnold Roosendaal, who is a doctoral candidate at the Tilburg University for Law, Technology and Society, warns that Facebook is tracking and tracing everyone, whether they use the social networking site or not. Roosendaal says that Facebook's tentacles reach way beyond the confines of its own web sites and subscriber base because more and more third party sites are using the 'Like This' button and Facebook Connect."

6 of 273 comments (clear)

  1. No surprises here by korkwin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is nothing new. We've all known this.

    1. Re:No surprises here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why on EARTH do people run their scripts, anyway?

      Because the out-of-the-box default behavior for every popular browser is to download everything referenced, pass whatever cookie it happens to have whenever it does that, execute every such downloaded script, and so on.

      Facebook isn't really the problem here. Our browsers are.

  2. Naw, really? by drunkennewfiemidget · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm not a doctoral candidate, and I could have told you that.

    Facebook's primary objective is data collection and selling it to marketers. It's kind of what they do.

  3. ABP by scheveningen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And that is why we like Add Block Plus. Not only does it protect some of your privacy, it also speeds up your page loading.

  4. Speak for yourself by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You have a website that has pictures of you, your current whereabouts, mood, who you like, where you live, work, sleep, and every interaction with anyone else has just as much information pulled out and sorted. And you're bothered by the Like this button?!

    You seem to be a Facebook user; I am not. If Facebook is tracking me anyway, then yes, I am bothered.

    --
    Palm trees and 8
    1. Re:Speak for yourself by vux984 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you are in the habit of accepting and keeping every cookie ever offered to you, you were being "tracked" before Facebook got involved.

      For my part I *really* don't care if the website I'm visiting is tracking my movements on its own site.

      I -only- get irate when that tracking starts to follow me around after I leave.

      I don't use facebook, and that near ubiquitous facbook icon on pages used to merely annoy me for being a waste of space and an eyesore. But I wasn't specifcially aware that it was actively tracking me if I ignored it. Perhaps if I had thought about it, I'd have realized that it was likely wired back to facebook and tracking me, but until now I hadn't.

      So I do find this interesting. Not that I needed another reason to despise facebook.

      And yes, other widespread tracking systems also do bother me; I've regularly criticized google's reach between its advertising and analytics numerous times here on slashdot.