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Australian Nik Cubrilovic recently wrote a blog post entitled “Logging out of Facebook is not enough” (http://ow.ly/6KGi2). In that post Nik revealed that Facebook was tracking users even after they logged out of Facebook.
In this post, Nik said:
The advice is to log out of Facebook. But logging out of Facebook only de-authorizes your browser from the web application, a number of cookies (including your account number) are still sent along to all requests to facebook.com. Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit. The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions.
[Ed. note] Everyone reading this post does delete their cookies, right?
The blog post appeared on Sept 25th. According to an article in the LA Times (http://ow.ly/6KGsb), Nik’s revelation triggered a request by lawmakers Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Tex.) to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate Facebook’s practice of collecting data from users even after they log out from the social networking service.
The LA Times article goes on to say:
Facebook says it took swift steps to address Cubrilovic’s concerns. It also said it never monitored users’ browsing habits. Cubrilovic confirmed in a later blog post that Facebook had resolved the logout issue.
But what the LA Times article fails to mention is that Facebook’s ‘swift steps’ are a year late. Those that read Nik’s post closely will find that Facebook was providing personally identifiable information – down to an account number – not to any website, but to “…all sites that integrate Facebook.” Nik notified Facebook of the issue back in November of 2010! He notified them again in January of 2011. It was only when he went public with the information in September of 2011 that he got a “swift” response.
Is the issue resolved? Not by a long shot. According to this article (http://ow.ly/6KHhQ) in USAToday:
At issue is Facebook’s alleged practice of using it’s Like button, and other mechanisms, integrated into partner Web pages all across the Web, to track its members Web surfing patterns and preferences for news, entertainment and personal topics.
These same issues have also raised legal issues in Germany (http://ow.ly/6KHck), where privacy laws are much stricter than in the U.S. In Ireland, the Irish Irish Data Protection Commissioner is also set to begin a privacy audit at Facebook’s international headquarters (http://ow.ly/6KHej).
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