26
2011
Facebook’s Hunger For Info Brings New Privacy Issues To Light
An article by admin
Recently a technologist brought to light the fact that Facebook is tracking its users and the websites that they are visiting, even when they log out of the social networking website. Also Facebook’s new Timeline feature which was launched a week ago, has been accessed earlier than it was supposed to by users, revealing a new feature that will allow people to see who removed them from their friends’ lists. These new changes to Facebook are proving to be a bit scary for those who fear the idea of sharing too much personal information. Facebook’s overall value improves when users decided to share more information, as this certainly helps marketing and other third-party concerns. Tests were conducted showing that when a user logs out of Facebook, rather than deleting the appropriate tracking cookies, the site simply modifies them and maintains the account information which is used to identify you. Then, when visiting a web page that has any kind Facebook widget, your browser maintains the connection with Facebook, and sends back various information. The only solution to this seems to be deleting every Facebook cookie in your browser, or perhaps using a separate browser for Facebook altogether.
Facebook is in the same position that Microsoft was with security issues a decade ago. Even the new timeline feature was being considered a bit questionable, allowing users to very simply check who “unfriended” them, but Facebook has apparently addressed this issue and written it off as a simple “bug” in the system.
