Is Facebook tracking your web browsing history?
I recently saw this paper: “Facebook Tracks and Traces Everyone: Like This!”
(download the PDF)
Short version
Zuckerberg's 'open' and 'connected' world
Every time you merely visit a site that displays a Like button, data is sent to Facebook which includes the address of the site you are visiting. Assuming you’ve also logged into Facebook, they have all the information they would need to associate these external page views with your Facebook identity.
What are they actually doing with this data? Possibly nothing, but I don’t see any statement saying “Don’t worry, we don’t store web page URLs you view, even though we could“. The usual guff about ‘anonymized’ data and cookies being required for functionality doesn’t quite cut it with me. This is Big Brother stuff, and they need to be crystal clear about what they could do and what they are doing. Read more…