Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Facebook knows where you wander on 100K sites

http://www.nytimes.com/external/venturebeat/2010/05/11/11venturebeat-facebook-social-plug-ins-now-strewn-across-1-75382.html


If I’ve read this article correctly, and the author is correct, Facebook now has plug-ins on 100,000 sites and growing, that tell it if you wander by, if you are “logged in” to Facebook.

I just went to Facebook, which is set to come up on my Profile page, then I went to the account settings, which gave me the choice to Log Off. To me, that means you don’t log off automatically when you click away from Facebook.

Thus, Facebook has a record of your browsing history, I assume available to the highest bidder. Google knows where you’ve been; but, somehow that’s not as creepy. I don’t think I like this; but, do I shut Facebook down; or, do I log out every time I leave it?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

With the Opera, Firefox, and K-Meleon browsers, you can set it to delete your cookies every time you exit. That protects your privacy a little bit.

I log out every time I leave Facebook. I'm like you- I have more confidence in Google than I do in Facebook. I just get the vibe that Facebook is up to something.

The Curmudgeon said...

Hmmmm. The other night, Facebook asked me if I wanted to use any of three other email addresses as a backup for the address I use on Facebook.

And they were all accurate addresses, too.

I'm logging out of Facebook at work now....