Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Facebook is Evil

For quite some time now, Facebook's user tracking hasn't been limited to your time on the site: any third-party website or service that's connected to FB or that uses a Like button is sending over your information, without your explicit permission,

Furthermore, Facebook's new Open Graph-enabled social web apps all send information to FB and can post to your profile or share with your friends whether you wish it or not.

And did you know that FB's tracking cookies never expire? They're altered instead of deleted when a user logs out. This means that the tracking cookies still have your account number embedded in them and still know which user you are after you've logged out.

It also means that when you visit another site with FB-enabled social applications, even though you're a logged-out user, Facebook still knows you're there. And by "you", I mean specifically your account, not an anonymous Facebook user.

Short of quitting FB entirely, you should at least consider getting the Adblock extension for Chrome or Firefox with an additional FB filter subscription. And you might add another level of privacy with the priv3 privacy extension.