The details of Facebook’s tracking was released and reported by USA Today. Facebook’s engineering director, Arthur Bejar and Gregg Stafancik, Facebook’s engineering manager, along with two other executives were included as sources of the information.
Facebook begins tracking a visitor for the first time when he/she registers for an account, at which time the visitor gets two cookies. One allows Facebook to display an alternate message to yo next time you visit and the second declares the account you happen to be using.
Basic cookies are not really a problem and they are commonly used to track visitors. But on every page you visit that has a Facebook plugin (the ‘Facebook like’ button is considered a plugin- and appears in MANY places) Facebook manipulates the cookies and keeps an accurate track of each page you visited. Facebook keeps this log of sites you’ve been to and stores the information for 90 days.
If you visit a site while logged out of Facebook (but with the cookie in your browser) your computer’s IP address, operating system and basic system information are stored. If you’re logged into Facebook when you visit those sites, your personal information (name, email, friend information, and other data are also stored.
How is the information used?
Facebook says it doesn’t use this data (except to evaluate plugin performance, frequency of visits, browser information, etc).
The problem is that Facebook can also gain insights into your sexual orientation, medical problems, religious beliefs, politics, and a host of other information you may not want to be in anyone else’s hands.
Many people are not aware of these issues and the question remains, how much privacy do we really have? And how much protection do we need?
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.