Facebook knows which sites you’ve been visiting

Facebook is on its way to world domination. It’s pretty much impossible to discover a website that doesn’t have a Facebook “Like” or “Share” button anymore. If you’re wondering why, it’s because the Facebook buttons appear on a third of the world’s 1,000 most-visit websites, according to a recent study by the Wall Street Journal. And apparently the buttons aren’t just there for show. Even if you don’t use their sharing functions, they can be used to track where you’ve been.

Apparently as long as you’re logged into your Facebook account, and you visit a site that has the Facebook button – Facebook knows you’re there. While Facebook representatives have claimed that unless the like button is clicked, no information is gathered. But an examination of the code found instances of objects and variables named “CavalryLogger” and “dimension-tracking” though we believe that the widgets do track our browsing habits in order to generate relevant ads more than for anything else.

So for those of you who don’t want your web surfing activities being monitored, avoid using the sharing buttons, avoid sites that have sharing buttons, log out of your Facebook account before you surf, or surf websites in the private mode of your web browser (i.e. Incognito mode for Chrome). Then again, if you were that concerned about your privacy, I would point out the obvious and say that you shouldn’t have signed up with Facebook in the first place. How many of you find Facebook tracking your surfing activities a problem?

George Wong
Categories: Web
Tags: Facebook, Privacy, Security, share, tracking