The part that scares me is that we, as web designers/developers/owners, are complicit in this. We are the ones who are putting social buttons on every page. We love this functionality, but they aren't giving it to us for free. We are trading them our user's information and browsing habits.<p>I'm not worried about the ethics of Facebook. I don't think a site like Facebook should be prevented from doing this openly. I'm worried about whether I can ethically include all these social plugins knowing that they will, in my opinion, invade my users' privacy.
Big Brother Blue is always watching.<p>It is becoming more and more obvious that we are nothing more than a pile of data to facebook, they don't look at us human beings who have a need for respect and privacy, but as potential data and revenue. I have always gotten the feeling that they think we are 'too dumb' to catch on, it's only a matter of time until the bubble bursts. They may still be a billion dollar company but the respect and loyalty will shift when something greater is envisioned and realized.
Facebook has said that it's rooting for an "open web", but it can't even be honest about what data it's collecting, how much tracking is done, and how that data is used by the company.<p>A scary aspect of Facebook is that most users are completely unaware and care-free. Their friends are on there, so why should they leave? A lot of my friends are leaving for Twitter because of the recent porn spam and the ticker nonsense, but that's a tiny chunk of the userbase (maybe a few hundred at the most).
> Bejar acknowledged that Facebook could learn where specific members go on the Web when they are logged off by matching the unique PC and browser characteristics logged by both the session cookie and the browser cookie.<p>> He emphasized that Facebook makes it a point not to do this. " We've said that we don't do it, and we couldn't do it without some form of consent and disclosure," Bejar says.<p>A better title would be "Facebook /could/ track users via the Like widgets, but doesn't do it yet"
I'd like to think that developers wouldn't implement this kind of functionality on ethical grounds -I bet there are some at facebook who refused- but I also bet there are some there who will do anything for buck no matter how questionable it is.
Just disable reading and writing of third party cookies. I've been using this option in Chrome for quite some time.<p>Hint: Facebook is not alone in doing this.
No Script + RequestPolicy + AdBlock ftw.<p>This combo makes your browsing a little frustrating, but very educational. Try it, even for a day and be amazed at how many sites load content and scripts from 8, 10, or more unrelated domains.<p>I gave up trying to keep an up-to-date host file for all the web beacon/scam urls. I just vet requests now as they occur. You wanna believe it has changed my surfing habits.
The hypocrisy of news sites decrying Facebook's tracking while putting Like buttons on every page is palpable. (There are no less than five different Facebook widgets on this article's page, plus multiple Twitter and Google+ buttons.) The reality is that website owners are the ones sending Facebook this data.
Doesn't it seem like time for a browser to get involved in protecting privacy? Maybe that's a stupid question. This just leaves me thinking I'd really like it if my browser only shared my cookies when I'm actually visiting the site requesting them, else it'd ignore the requests altogether.<p>No doubt that's either dumb, not possible, or something someone already thought of.
This is why I keep facebook in a separate browser. The could technically still track me using flash cookies but as the site isn't on my "can play flash content" whitelist this is no issue either.<p>It means I can't comment on a growing number of sites that use fb for their comments system, but that is no loss to <i>me</i> in my not-so-humble opinion.
Question- Would people be more willing to let a platform track browsing activity if there was 100% transparency? Asking this question for the startup that we are working on, where we want to get permission from users to follow their certain activities- which is directly applicable to the platform value.
Wait, how is this even technically possible?<p>Sure, Facebook can see sites you visit which use Facebook Connect in some form, but can they actually "create a running log of the web pages that each of its 800 million or so members has visited during the previous 90 days" like the article claims?
It sucks that Facebook can get away with this but services like KISSMetrics and ad networks get sued for tracking users...even though that's what the goal of analytics is, whereas Facebook's job is to provide a social network that protects its users' data.
solution is to install the adBlockPlus extension, open up any page, say, techcrunch.com, then open the extension dialog and block external domains like twitter, facebook, google, google-analytics, etc.