Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Cookies Track Users Even After Logging Out
First time accepted submitter Core Condor writes "According to Australian technologist Nik Cubrilovic: 'Logging out of Facebook is not enough.' He added, Even after you are logged out, Facebook is able to track your browser's page every time you visit a website. He wrote in his blog: 'With my browser logged out of Facebook, whenever I visit any page with a Facebook like button, or share button, or any other widget, the information, including my account ID, is still being sent to Facebook.' After explaining the cookies behavior he also suggested a way to fix the tracking problem: 'The only solution to Facebook not knowing who you are is to delete all Facebook cookies.'"
a week ago I went to a website and it asked me (by my name) if I wanted to follow them on Facebook. I was not logged into Facebook at the time.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
From TFA:
I don't have direct experience in this area so I'm wondering, why exactly is logout supposed to mean deleting cookies instead of just noting in them that the user is logged out?
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
Notice how goatse doesn't have a FB "like" button? I think goatse needs a "like" button. C'mon, everybody, why don't we setup a shitload of goatse mirrors with "like" buttons? There's more than one way to poison a DB.....
C|N>K
As a social protest, all it seems to accomplish is annoying your friends and family
Which, as antisocial as it sounds, I would say is a good thing. The last thing we need is for people to simply assume that everyone has a Facebook account, and since that is what a lot of people assume now, they need to be annoyed and reminded that not everyone is on Facebook. Why should someone like Mark Zuckerberg be able to exert so much control over how people communicate?
You don't have to "submit to the beast" - just use it for what's convenient.
Any communication on Facebook is submitting to the beast.
Palm trees and 8
...Facebook.
There is a lot of data that's exceptionally valuable for marketing, which companies can only get if they do tracking way beyond visits to their own web pages. That added value is perceived by advertising execs as literally enormous, so it should be assumed anyone who can implement this thinks they have a strong incentive. It's like, how common would bank robbery be if the penalty was 10 days in jail and the potential reward was a million dollars?
To see how, lets take an example. A company may pay a few cents per for a list of valid e-mail addresses. Now, link one of those addresses to the information that the possessor of that address definitely orders things on-line, and it's a little more valuable. Add that the things ordered on-line include prescription drugs, and it's worth more. Now how much is it worth linked to the information that the person is not yet ordering any antidepressants, but has just spent several hours searching several terms relating to depression? A list of e-mail addresses that fit those criteria is generally estimated to be worth about $ 250 US per entry by the pharmaceutical firms. With the right combinations of information sources, essentially a matter of asking the right questions, this sort of data is at least perceived to be the holy grail of targeted advertising. Personally, I assume that any for-profit that isn't looking for this sort of data is only avoiding it because they doubt the American Advertising Council's estimates of how much business it can drive, and not because they have a moral objection. Yeah, maybe some of them are genuinely being ethical, but I recognize that the sheer scope of the temptation is bound to make many of them cross the line, and it's time to be a little paranoid about privacy.
Who is John Cabal?