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Heise's 'Two Clicks For More Privacy' vs. Facebook

Posted by timothy on from the like-grit-in-the-eye-of-sauron dept.

First time accepted submitter FlameWise writes "Yesterday, German technology news site Heise changed their social 'like' buttons to a two-click format (Original in German). This will effectively disable unintentional automatic tracking of all page visits by third-party social sites like Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Less than 24 hours later over 500 websites have asked about the technology. Facebook is now threatening to blacklist Heise (Original in German)." As I read the updated story, Facebook has backpedaled a bit, so "blacklist" may no longer be the operative word. An anonymous reader adds a quick explanation of the changed interface: "Instead of enabling Facebook to track a user (arguably without prior consent) by placing a 'like' button on the website in the usual way, a greyed-out like button is shown. If a user wants to share or 'like,' he has to execute an additional click to enable the original Facebook 'like' button and get the desired behavior. This technique obviously has a disadvantage for Facebook, because the behavioral tracking does not work anymore."

4 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. don't people already do this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "disable unintentional automatic tracking of all page visits by third-party social sites like Facebook"

    I think anyone who cares the slightest bit about privacy already blocks facebook's address blocks, googles trackers, and so on.

    Your computer obeys you. You get to decide whether it stories cookies from any given site, whether it loads *anything* from facebook's addresses, whether it loads web bugs, and so on. It is under your control. I figure that my computer exists to make MY life easier, not to make money for facebook or google.

    "Automatic tracking" can almost entirely be disabled already - and for years now. You just have to DO IT, and most people would rather bitch than spend the 5 minutes it takes.

    1. Re:don't people already do this? by Anthony+Mouse · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Automatic tracking" can almost entirely be disabled already - and for years now. You just have to DO IT, and most people would rather bitch than spend the 5 minutes it takes.

      If I'm just reading the news, I use whatever computer is in front of me. Sometimes that's my PC, or my laptop, or my PC at work, or a school computer, etc. Having to change a setting on every different computer I use is a huge annoyance, to say nothing of the times when I don't have administrative access to make certain changes.

      Anything that makes protecting my privacy the default is a win.

  2. Nice to see this. by ArchKaine · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I have to say that I'm impressed with Heise doing this. This puts the choice of being tracked into the user's hands.

    --
    Ignorance is blissful, to the ignorant.
    1. Re:Nice to see this. by Anthony+Mouse · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I can certainly see why Facebook hates it though: Not only does it deprive them of the tracking information for all the people who don't click the like button, it changes the user's choice in clicking the button from "click this button if you like the story, but you'll be tracked either way" to "click this button to cause Facebook to track you" -- and if it becomes common knowledge that that is how the like button works, fewer people will use it.