Slashdot Mirror
Heise's 'Two Clicks For More Privacy' vs. Facebook
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."
No, dude. They have a little grey icon hosted locally, and when it's clicked they do an AJAX call and insert the Facebook "Like" button dynamically. That prevents Facebook from using the page that gets loaded in the iframe with the Like button from tracking the user until they've clicked the button. Otherwise everyone who visited the site would automatically be tracked when the Like button was automatically loaded.
"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.
Some missing context: http://www.kreativ-ackern.de/2011/08/20/gefaellt-mir-facebook-dienste-illegal/ (In German).
Basically, a German authority for privacy rights has recently claimed that embedding a Facebook "Like" button on your web site is a violation of german privacy rights, because it allows tracking of all users of the web site by a third party. According to the article, having a "Like" button on your site can yield in fines up to EUR 50k. This is probably technically and legally correct, I doubt that anyone would actually be sued any time soon, though. But the headline has made a big splash on the german internet in the last weeks, and I'd assume that heise's move is a direct reaction to this (which is mentioned in the document as a possibly legal way to have a Like button on your web site).