As you casually drift around the Internet from one website to another, do you ever wonder about the “Facebook Like Button?” It is ubiquitous and so ingrained in the social web that it has now become part of the norm. Many people may not be aware that you do not have to click on the “Like Button” to be Facebook-tracked.
Your browsing habits are linked to your Facebook profile which generally includes Personally Identifiable Information (PII) such as your first and last name. When you visit a site with a “Like” button present, Facebook will already know how you are interacting with that particular site and you do not have to click on the “Like” button to have this information disclosed to Facebook. As long as you are logged into your Facebook account, Facebook can track you as you travel around the Internet and there are millions of site pages that host this button that can send your browsing habits back to the mothership.
Christopher Mims of Technology Review stated last week: “Those Like buttons have the potential to be, essentially, a window on the browser history of every Facebook user on the planet—all 700 million of them.”
Amir Efrati of The Wall Street Journal further elaborates:
The widgets, which were created to make it easy to share content with friends and to help websites attract visitors, are a potentially powerful way to track Internet users. They could link users’ browsing habits to their social-networking profile, which often contains their name.
For example, Facebook or Twitter know when one of their members reads an article about filing for bankruptcy on MSNBC.com or goes to a blog about depression called Fighting the Darkness, even if the user doesn’t click the “Like” or “Tweet” buttons on those sites.
Facebook does not only include “generalized” data. People provide real names, real addresses, real phone numbers, real photos and real birth dates. They have conversations with real friends and real family. Facebook is perhaps the biggest treasure trove of PII data on the Internet today.
From Facebook’s Privacy Policy:
Whenever you connect with a Platform application or website, we will receive information from them, including information about actions you take. In some cases, in order to personalize the process of connecting, we may receive a limited amount of information even before you connect with the application or website.
There are ways that you can stop Facebook tracking in its tracks. If you log out of Facebook prior to going to other sites you will not be tracked. If you prefer convenience over having to reenter your password each time you return to Facebook, Cocoon has a simple solution – we give you the option to block Facebook tracking.
You can find out more about Cocoon at GetCocoon.com
Stop by and say hello on Twitter and Facebook too – The Cocoon Team!
