An Australian blogger claims Facebook is following users after they log out of the website.
An Australian blogger, Nik Cubrilovic, is claiming that Facebook continues to follow its users even after they log out of the website.
According to him, “Logging out of Facebook only de-authorizes your browser from the web application, a number of cookies (including your account number) are still sent along to all requests to facebook.com.” This, he said, means that, “With my browser logged out of Facebook, whenever I visit any page with a Facebook like button, or share button, or any other widget, the information, including my account ID, is still being sent to Facebook.”
The problem, he explains, is with the cookies Facebook uses. Rather than removing the cookies when a user logs out, Facebook merely alters them and sends information back to Facebook every time users pass a page with a Facebook “like,” “share,” or similar button.
Facebook was quick to respond to the allegations, with a Facebook engineer named Gregg Stefancik replying directly on the blog. “Unlike other major Internet companies,” he writes, “we have no interest in tracking people,” adding, “Our cookies aren’t used for tracking. They just aren’t.”
One concern, however, is that Cubrilovic contends that he brought the problem to Facebook’s attention in November 2010 and again in January 2011. So far he has received no official response. It is only now, after he has gone public with the claims, that Facebook has even deigned to answer, and that, only in his blog.
Read More at the Sydney Morning Herald.
Read More at PC Pro.
