Facebook Begins Tracking Non-Users Around the Internet (theverge.com) 124
Amar Toor, reporting for The Verge: Facebook will now display ads to web users who are not members of its social network, the company announced Thursday, in a bid to significantly expand its online ad network. As The Wall Street Journal reports, Facebook will use cookies, "like" buttons, and other plug-ins embedded on third-party sites to track members and non-members alike (Editor's note: link swapped with a non-paywall source). The company says it will be able to better target non-Facebook users and serve relevant ads to them, though its practices have come under criticism from regulators in Europe over privacy concerns. Facebook began displaying a banner notification at the top of its News Feed for users in Europe today, alerting them to its use of cookies as mandated under an EU directive.Mark Wilson of BetaNews adds that Facebook has outlined these changes in its cookies policy page. As part of which, the company is now allowing Facebook users to opt-out of the ad scheme by making changes to their Facebook settings. For users that don't have a Facebook account, they can opt-out through Digital Advertising Alliance in the United States and Canada, and the European Interactive Digital Adverting Alliance in Europe.
"Begins?" (Score:5, Insightful)
As anyone who's used RequestPolicy, NoScript or uBlock could tell you: any page with a Facebook like button is a tracker. [slashdot.org] Why, we even had an article about this... six years ago.
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Re:"Begins?" (Score:4, Informative)
Re: "Begins?" (Score:2, Informative)
Don't forget their content delivery network
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The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers
Unfortunately, we don't have any Jedi to get us out of this one.
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"Begins" should be read as "now admits it is"
"Hi, I'm Marky.... (Score:2)
"I see you're not using Facebook. Can I help steal your identity and expose you to phisning attempts now, too?"
and everybody still running Office 97 clicks.
Digital Advertising Alliance (Score:2)
http://www.aboutads.info/ [aboutads.info] is the domain I found for Digital Advertising Alliance. Can anyone confirm?
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Re:Digital Advertising Alliance (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't bother, it's a trap. The "opt out" works by setting a cookie on your computer. If you care at all about stopping tracking, you already block such cookies anyway.
Privacy Badger and uBlock Origin are much, much more effective. Since they can't offer a way to opt in, the nuke-it-from-orbit option is the only one left.
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I've always had 3rd-party cookies disabled anyway, so even if I wanted I couldn't use their "service".
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I have found the best approach is to setup squid + sslbump + privoxy. The last of which can mutilate all cookies to be session cookies. This effectively prevents lots of the trackers from functioning. I also always have my user agent molested to be a recent version of chrome on Windows 8 64 ( i have to adjust periodically). That way the user agent is dead common and they can't track individual devices behind my NAT as easily. I have a cron job that runs to release the DHCP lease from my ISP every night
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Sounds like you take allot of enjoyment browsing the web - or at least preparing to be able to browse the web.
Re:Digital Advertising Alliance (Score:5, Funny)
Anything worth doing, is worth doing while geekily obsessing over all the details.
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I enjoy the web a lot more than I do when browsing from somewhere I don't have this setup in place like on my mobile and stuff. I probably should replace my ssh VPN with openVPN so I can get a client and tunnel my mobile back home thru it all.
A lot of ads and crap still slip through the filters and its bad enough but man I am always stunned to see what most people are putting up with.
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No, that's enforced by the browser based on the domain name of the site setting the cookie, websites have no say in it.
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Yeah, it's funny - I looked at the page, and it basically told me "we can't opt you out of these sites' tracking you because your web browser is blocking third party cookies. Please allow third-party cookies to use our site."
OR... I can just keep blocking third-party cookies, and routinely wiping all browsing data.
Opt Out Policy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Fuck YOU Facebook.
So, to Opt out of being tracked by you, I have to go to yet another place (which is not obvious) and sign up to not be tracked. Fuck you world which allows this shit to be acceptable.
1) Use Tor
2) Use Incognito Mode
3) Time to block cookies, delete cookies, and so on.
http://www.howtogeek.com/63721... [howtogeek.com]
Did I mention ... FUCK YOU FACEBOOK!
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Something about "broken clocks" ?? ;)
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Eloquently put, young one!
Couldn't agree more.
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Opting Out of Being REMINDED of Tracking (Score:1)
> So, to Opt out of being tracked by you,
You are confused. You can not opt out of being tracked. Google, facebook, etc, they are all the same -- none of these opt-out settings actually stop them from tracking you.
All you get by opting out is that they won't show you ads based on the data they have collected. But they are still collecting it and using it for other things like feeding it into profiling databases to target you in other ways - like what crap to send you in the mail and to resell to polit
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There a site out there that puts the so-called social trackers behind a toggle button for each. The audience is geeky, but it's by large (french speaking) Windows users and gamers that care about the news about the latest graphics driver or piece of hardware. Still, the web site has been around for as long as slashdot and like slashdot there's basic respect for the users.
You still need blocking for the billions other web sites.
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Do you mean per month or per page? (Score:2)
If you want money use a paywall
For some types of sites, particularly sites on which a user views only one or a few pages, a subscription cannot easily substitute for advertisements because very few people are willing to spend $4 for a whole month of access to a site just to read a single article. Selling access in granularity smaller than a month is impractical because of the transaction fees of both credit cards and Bitcoin, which tend to exceed 0.25 USD. Sites would need to band together and create a federated micropayment system. If o
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How entitled and spoiled you people are
'republican typing' detected.
but you didn't use enough of the magic keywords, like STEALING, and CONTENT and PIRATES.
come on. you'll get a much better troll score if you hit more of the talking points from your party.
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So you're mad because sites that provide free content let Facebook pay for the content YOU decide to consume...
Most of the time I have no way of knowing beforehand that a site I'm about to visit has signed a deal with the Devil. Who do I ask? How do I know the answer is truthful? It's kinda like going on a date with someone who seems responsible and honest but whom you find out, (after the two of you have had sex), is indiscriminately promiscuous and riddled with STDs.
How entitled and spoiled you people are.
"Entitled and spoiled" for being indignant about being stalked around the Web? Grow up.
You just have to throw on an extension or two.
Which is essentially what GP said he was planning to do. He see
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You and I have disagreed about a variety of things, but I'm with you on this one.
Fuck Facebook and all their cronies as well. Fuck them ALL.
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Fuck you world which allows this shit to be acceptable.
While I agree with Fuck You Facebook, we're in a world of information economy. Why I didn't even pay someone to post this reply to you, and we enjoy almost limitless content for free thanks to this bizarre economy where someone tries to make sense of our browsing habits.
Facebook is nothing more than an advertising network just like any other in this case.
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Because these methods will result in 404 Not Found?
sick, sad, world (Score:5, Funny)
Oh. wait, that wasn't them.
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Really. Although, more and more, I'm thinking Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle, and all the rest, have started using "50 Shades of Grey" as the basis of their management philosophy. . .
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> "Whatever happened to their motto "don't be evil"?"
That was meant for us, not them.
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bonus points for the daria ref ;)
I use Ublock Origin (Score:2)
will it block Facebook tracking ad shit?
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1) Can hosts protect against shit served by the same server - NO
2) Can hosts protect multiple devices all at once - NO
3) Can hosts protect devices that don't allow access to hosts files - NO
4) Can hosts protect from spam - NO, mail gets delivered, not requested
5) Can hosts protect from inline javascript (one that is in the html body) - ding ding ding - we have a winner - NO
6) Can you manage and monitor in a single place all that is getting blocked and who makes the
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Try enabling the Easy Privacy list in the uBlock options, that will nuke it. I also recommend installing Privacy Badger along side uBlock for the best possible protection from stalkers.
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We've become Idiocracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Advertising?!? Really?
Industrial Age
Information Age
Advertising Age
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Welcome to Slashdot, I love you ! (and, it's got Electrolytes ! What nerds crave. . . )
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Industrial Age
Information Age
Advertising Age
Shoe Event Horizon [wikia.com]
(Radio version if you're not at work [youtube.com])
facebook can go die in a fire (Score:1)
Seriously, facebook needs to go die in a fire, it contributes nothing useful to society, causes all sorts of mental health issues and invades privacy of people who want nothing to do with it.
The Stasi ain't got shit on Facebook.
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I'm over 50 and regularly deal with Millennials and other 'younger' folks on a professional basis and they fall into 2 distinct camps:
1) Reasonable and interested in the wider world around them and where they fit into it. Well informed and knowledgeable.
2) Glued to FB/Twitter/texting to such an extent that it has become their *only* source of information. These folks regularly fall into holes (figurative and literal), walk into utility poles and kill others while driving. These are some of the most shal
Privacy Badger (Score:5, Interesting)
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As per your link
Will you be supporting any other browsers besides Chrome / Firefox?
In the near future we hope to release Privacy Badger for Opera, Safari, and Firefox Mobile. Unfortunately at the moment we cannot support Internet Explorer, since current version IE appears to be incompatible with how Privacy Badger works at a technical level. (With that said, if you would like to work on porting Privacy Badger to other platforms, please let us know!)
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I wasn't. But I am now!
I 'opt-out' by never keeping any cookies (Score:2)
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This is a good solution but is there a way to add exceptions for some sites? If yes, which browser is this?
I don't want to go through extra verification when logging into my online banking site because the cookies are missing or having to log into e.g. slashdot every time I restart the browser.
Maybe a feature to override cookie TTL can solve this. Force maximum lifetime of cookie to be 30 seconds (configurable) except for whitelist hosts.
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I assumed they were already doing that (Score:2)
I am totally shocked to see the word "begins" in the headline. Has anyone verified it's true? I thought the whole damn point of persuading websites into using "like" buttons and other widgety things, was that they were already extremely interested in people who don't directly use Facebook's website, so they wanted them to talk to those peoples' browsers on the side.
Ghostery (Score:2)
You're welcome
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Ghostery has gone down the shitter with their new redesign. Previously you could opt-in to having them semi-anonymously share the list of trackers that you blocked, that is how they made their money. And that was enough to scare some people off.
But now you can't even change ANY settings without going to their website, and they try really hard to trick you into creating an "account," its a total fustercluck. But the most trust-destroying thing they've done is to remove critical reviews from their listing
Looks like (Score:2)
we need an automatic cookie vacuum cleaner running every 30 seconds....
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You mean something like Self-destructing Cookies?
Stalking and g'bye (Score:2)
FB has smoothly transitioned from tracking to stalking. A big NOPE and goodbye to all my FB friends as I delete my account and never use it again.
For users that don't have a Facebook account... (Score:1)
hosts file (Score:2)
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Zuckerberg has already made his billions... he doesn't really care what you do.
I HATE FACEBOOK!!!! (Score:2)
i hope somebody finds zuckerberg and sucker-punches him in the nose for me
Backwards system (Score:2)
Beginning? (Score:2)
Years as in like - years. You have to do a little research into who it is that you are blocking, because they aren't as open as Google.
Browser feature that cleans the cookies (Score:1)
Need browser feature that removes all cookies created by tab when tab is closed. Have ability to add exceptions for sites where you want the cookies to persist (like banking, slashdot, etc).
Does anything like that exist?
Incognito mode is great and all but I need exceptions to handful of sites where I want the cookies to persist.
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Need browser feature that removes all cookies created by tab when tab is closed. Have ability to add exceptions for sites where you want the cookies to persist (like banking, slashdot, etc).
Does anything like that exist?
The Self-destructing cookies extension in Firefox does that. By default, all cookies created in a tab get deleted a few seconds after the tab is closed. You can set overrides on individual domains to either keep cookies until the entire browser is closed or permanently.
javascript (Score:2)
You can't opt-out without enabling Javascript. Fuck that shit.
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with all due respect to Don
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de'money...de'money
sorry before first coffee
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