Along with Facebook’s big redesign has come some new scrutiny on exactly how the company is following you around the internet. According to some new reports online, Facebook is still tracking everywhere you visit online and sending that data to Facebook even if you’re logged out of Facebook.
According to entrepreneur and self-described hacker Nik Cubrilovic, who shows the code involved with this alleged security issue on his website, “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.”
Facebook has responded to Mashable’s story about this and says:
“I am a Facebook engineer that works on these systems and I wanted to say that the logged out cookies are used for safety and protection including: identifying spammers and phishers, detecting when somebody unauthorized is trying to access your account, helping you get back into your account if you get hacked, disabling registration for a under-age users who try to re-register with a different birthdate, powering account security features such as 2nd factor login approvals and notification, and identifying shared computers to discourage the use of ‘keep me logged in”.
“Also please know that also when you’re logged in (or out) we don’t use our cookies to track you on social plugins to target ads or sell your information to third parties. I’ve heard from so many that what we do is to share or sell your data, and that is just not true. We use your logged in cookies to personalize (show you what your friends liked), to help maintain and improve what we do, or for safety and protection.”
Which reads to me like a long way of saying “Yep! It’s true!”
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