Logging Out Of Facebook Is Not Enough Now
You know that?? your browser sends information to Facebook whenever you visit a web page that hosts a Facebook Like or Share button or other Facebook content. That’s true even if you do not have a Facebook account. If you do have a Facebook account, Facebook gets to know which sites you visit. Some users may see this as a privacy invasion. The general advice that you get on the Internet is to log out of the Facebook account when you do not use the site. The reasoning here is that logging out should prevent the identification of the user on third party sites with Facebook content.
According to Nik Cubrilovic though this is not the case. Facebook can track logged out users as much as it can track logged in users. How do they do it? With cookies of course. One would assume that logging out would delete all cookies linked to the account.
This is apparently not the case here. Facebook is not deleting all cookies when a user logs out. Nik notes:
To make it easier to see the cookies being unset, the names are in italics. If you compare the cookies that have been set in a logged in request, and compare them to the cookies that are being unset in the logout request, you will quickly see that there are a number of cookies that are not being deleted, and there are two cookies (locale and lu) that are only being given new expiry dates, and three new cookies (W, fl, L) being set.
Cookies that identify the user based on the account number still exist, which means that Facebook has access to that data whenever a connection to the site is made (on Facebook itself or third party sites). This means that Facebook can still identify users even if they are logged out of the social networking site.
The only solution? To delete all Facebook cookies whenever possible. While you could do that manually every time you log out of Facebook, it is probably not the best solution in this case. First, you have to do it every time which can quickly become a nuisance, and second, you have to remember to do it.
Here are a few add-ons and extensions that take care of that for your:
Facebook Blocker [Firefox] – Blocks all Facebook contents on third party sites from sending information. You can still interact with the elements if you want, but until you do, no information are submitted.
Facebook Disconnect [Google Chrome] – Blocks all Facebook traffic from third party sites.
Facebook Blocker [Opera] – Seems to be identical to the Google Chrome extension, blocks all Facebook third party traffic.
Have another add-on or tip on how to cope with the situation? Let everyone know in the comments.
According to Nik Cubrilovic though this is not the case. Facebook can track logged out users as much as it can track logged in users. How do they do it? With cookies of course. One would assume that logging out would delete all cookies linked to the account.
This is apparently not the case here. Facebook is not deleting all cookies when a user logs out. Nik notes:
To make it easier to see the cookies being unset, the names are in italics. If you compare the cookies that have been set in a logged in request, and compare them to the cookies that are being unset in the logout request, you will quickly see that there are a number of cookies that are not being deleted, and there are two cookies (locale and lu) that are only being given new expiry dates, and three new cookies (W, fl, L) being set.
Cookies that identify the user based on the account number still exist, which means that Facebook has access to that data whenever a connection to the site is made (on Facebook itself or third party sites). This means that Facebook can still identify users even if they are logged out of the social networking site.
The only solution? To delete all Facebook cookies whenever possible. While you could do that manually every time you log out of Facebook, it is probably not the best solution in this case. First, you have to do it every time which can quickly become a nuisance, and second, you have to remember to do it.
Here are a few add-ons and extensions that take care of that for your:
Facebook Blocker [Firefox] – Blocks all Facebook contents on third party sites from sending information. You can still interact with the elements if you want, but until you do, no information are submitted.
Facebook Disconnect [Google Chrome] – Blocks all Facebook traffic from third party sites.
Facebook Blocker [Opera] – Seems to be identical to the Google Chrome extension, blocks all Facebook third party traffic.
Have another add-on or tip on how to cope with the situation? Let everyone know in the comments.
0 comments: