Facebook follows your readers through you

[guest14]

We all read about Facebook using the data gleaned from our Facebook pages to data mine us and our interests (and then sells it on), but perhaps what you don't know or realise is that wherever you post social media icons on your website, they use that to follow you around the internet - wherever you go.

If you go to a website that has a Facebook icon linked to a Facebook account (anyone's), then it is tracking your movements EVERYWHERE.

A year ago I discovered this and immediately removed all social media sharing icons from my website(s) because I was concerned then about the invasion of privacy that activity represented not just to me, but everyone who came to my sites. Even if you're logged out of Facebook. Seriously, we should know this stuff and knowing it means we shouldn't allow it.

When I visit YOUR website you don't know it, Your host and stats don't know it (other than an IP address). However Facebook knows it's me.. Tobias Roote and that's information they should not really be allowed to have should they?

[Lee Carlon]

I looked at this a few years ago, and can't quite remember how I did it, but you can set up social sharing buttons that don't have the tracking. From memory, you need to set up your own buttons without Facebook's javascript. A search for "social sharing without tracking" should get you what you need.

[guest14]

I looked at this a few years ago, and can't quite remember how I did it, but you can set up social sharing buttons that don't have the tracking. From memory, you need to set up your own buttons without Facebook's javascript. A search for "social sharing without tracking" should get you what you need.

Yes, I think that's possible, but my point was that it's not my site that's the problem. Everyone who has a website, especially those with bog standard templates and apps, generally just follow the run-of-the-mill add-on's and aren't aware that they are contributing to the data mining efforts of Facebook. If I visit those sites, my personal identity is picked up and so is yours.

So, whilst I could put non-tracking social buttons on my website, I can't over-ride the one's on yours and everyone else's sites - or can I?

[Lee Carlon]

I looked at this a few years ago, and can't quite remember how I did it, but you can set up social sharing buttons that don't have the tracking. From memory, you need to set up your own buttons without Facebook's javascript. A search for "social sharing without tracking" should get you what you need.

Yes, I think that's possible, but my point was that it's not my site that's the problem. Everyone who has a website, especially those with bog standard templates and apps, generally just follow the run-of-the-mill add-on's and aren't aware that they are contributing to the data mining efforts of Facebook. If I visit those sites, my personal identity is picked up and so is yours.

So, whilst I could put non-tracking social buttons on my website, I can't over-ride the one's on yours and everyone else's sites - or can I?

Right, I see. It looks like there are some tools that might be useful. I haven't used it but this looks interesting: https://www.eff.org/privacybadger

But you're right, it seems almost impossible to not be tracked, and that means most people will be :(

[Simon Haynes]

I kill all my cookies when I close my browser, which means until I visit facebook I'm not actually logged in.

You can test this by visiting a site where it shows the FB plugin on the page. If the faces are of your friends, then you're being tracked. If they're random strangers, you're not. (A local newspaper has the plugin on their page.)

I'm sure they can still track me by IP address though.

[twicebitten]

It's worse than this, actually. My advice is to download a script blocker like privacy badger as an add-on. Block everything, backing off to allow things only if you lose functionality on a site (usually things labeled "fonts" are perfectly safe, for instance, and you'll have to turn on calendar scripts to schedule ads, but you can turn them right back off) You'll see the invisible (has nothing to do with buttons or cookies) tracking scripts running on every site via privacy badger or noscript. They leave stuff on your computer's hard drive. To get rid of it, download Spybot Search and Destroy, free version, from CNet. (CNet, ironically, has 11 tracking scripts running)  If you use your phone for browsing, there is no way to avoid being tracked as you browse, so the computer is safer. Twitter, facebook, many others are tracking you on most websites. Not here, not wikipedia, but a lot of places. I just checked at bookbub's author signin--there are five scripts running. A major newspaper, randomly chosen, 11 tracking scripts. That's how magazines and newspapers make their money these days.

Further advice: never hand over your mailing list to anyone, no matter if they swear it will improve ad performance or not. They are lying, and they are using it for bad purposes. (Consider it a sacred trust between you and your readers, rather than a way to line some billionaire's pockets even more.)

Google's tracking is hard to avoid without reverting to land lines and snail mail, and apple impossible if you own apple devices. They're tracking you all the time, and the tracking rate increased with the new gmail version. Worse, Google (or Apple, or both) knows exactly where you shop if you carry your phone, how long you shop there, and if they wanted, they could pay for the overhead security camera footage from every store and assuming you buy via credit card, your purchases. (they don't care, but they could, and at that point that all checkouts are automatic (they "read" the codes off your purchases and "read" your credit card as you walk through a gate), privacy will be entirely dead. Enjoy what's left while we have it, is my attitude! (though I block scripts and never carry a phone with me.)

eta: privacy fiends are so upset about Google's changes that they're looking into other options for mail. Some are listed here: https://lifehacker.com/ditch-gmail-with-these-alternatives-1829337583/amp

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Or there was, when the internet was new, but those days are long gone and VS's eating up boards like writers' forums to monetize them differently is just one head of a Hydra that gets more monstrous with every passing week.

Cheers!

[Simon Haynes]

I run Noscript with a whitelist. All the scripts on any new site I visit are automatically blocked, and I enable them domain by domain as needed.

Been doing this for about, I don't know, 8 or 9 years? I keep daily backups of my firefox profile, to ensure I never have to rebuild the list.

My whitelist must be huge by now, but it's easy to add a new site as required. And it's nice to see all the others permanently blocked.

That's why the viglinks fuss passed me by.


Some sites confuse noscript with an adblocker, and ask me to switch it off. I never go back to those.