to those on facebook

[Guest tx2sturgis]

If you don't use it then why are you attacking facebook and the people who use it? It isn't really any different than anything you use on the interrnet. Most everything tracks your use and they use it to advertise and sell.

 

OK I'll get off my now

 

 

I'm not attacking anyone except pointing out the policies they have.

 

 

Wouldnt you be a bit annoyed if your not a member of something, yet the website keeps tabs on you?

 

Lets say you went in to your cookie cache in your browser and found cookies from, say, bimbos-in-heat.com or unitednations.org or something like that, when you had NEVER been on those websites on purpose...and realized hmmm...these guys are keeping databases on every website I go to.

 

 

Same thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest tx2sturgis]

Hey just think, this appears to be a very popular topic, and if even one member is scratching their head about this, thats all I wanted.

 

Yall have fun on facebook. Just remeber, cattle have no idea where they are headed either.

 

 

 

[LilBeaver]

Just wanted to say that there has been a lot of good and valuable information in this thread. Thanks for keeping the posts informative, citing your sources and providing some good discussion.

I know I have not contributed much or provided much in the way of my opinions, but I have been following along and skimming many of the stories/information on this as it IS a big deal [to me at least].

[flb_78]

well, I just cleared my cookies and surfed for 10 minutes.

 

I did not go to Facebook and I have 2 facebook cookies.

 

I also now have 5 Twitter cookies in that same amount of time.

 

Should I be worried about twitter since it's putting cookies on my computer?

 

VR.org put 7 cookies on my computer.

[etcswjoe]

well, I just cleared my cookies and surfed for 10 minutes.

 

I did not go to Facebook and I have 2 facebook cookies.

 

I also now have 5 Twitter cookies in that same amount of time.

 

Should I be worried about twitter since it's putting cookies on my computer?

 

VR.org put 7 cookies on my computer.

 

 

Only if your diabetic.

[Freebird]

To the best of my knowledge, the only reason that VentureRider installs cookies is to keep up with your password, the threads that you have already read, new threads, etc. They are not tracking cookies. I don't WANT to know where else you go.

[BradT]

. I don't WANT to know where else you go.

 

This zucker fellow and a couple friends can keep up with 800 million and you can't keep up with a few thousand

 

 

Brad

[BuddyRich]

Facebook is just the tip of the iceberg. This has been going on for years in more ways then we know. Why do you think all these "browsers" are free? Do you have any idea how many times a day your PC or Mac contacts home and gives them info ? Its a lot more than your think. And of course they will all deny any personal info is being transmitted. Use a network and your being tracked somewhere. That includes your phone. The biggest network in the world has been around for years. The public switched phone system . So callin facebook on the carpet is kinda like pointing out one milk cow in a heard and blaming all the cow crap on it. Edited February 3, 2012 by BuddyRich

[Guest tx2sturgis]

 

There are lots of companies that use tracking cookies. It's pretty normal these days...but in the past, most of those were placed in your browser after you visited the website. If you removed them, they were gone until you revisited the website. Not now.

 

I use twitter and google and amazon, venturerider and other websites frequently. I EXPECT those cookies to be there. I have no problem with that.

I know how this stuff works. Well, some of it anyway!

 

What chaps me is the underlying attitude at FB. that is that we, the Internet public, are a product to be harvested and sold for advertisers, and no matter where you go on the net, or what you do to stop them, they will have the scoop on what you do.

 

This includes the capability for the tracking cookies to track your activities on adult websites, banking websites, political websites, and more.

 

The tracking cookies can relate data such as how much money is in your bank account if you do online banking, what your credit card numbers are, where you bought your wife's slinky lingerie, what movies you watch on Hulu, and other details about you.

 

Do I think ol zucky is interested in the $1800 I have in the bank or what music I downloaded on iTunes? Probably not.

 

But if the data is in an online server somewhere, (and it is), then that means its available if hackers break in and access the records, like they did recently with zappos. In that case, 24 million customers had some limited personal data posted on the Internet.

 

Just imagine the power that hackers, either internal, or external, would have if they were to hold that data ransom, or publish it on the net, and threatening to reveal everyone's bank account numbers, credit card numbers, passwords to online vendors' etc etc.

 

Facebook is not the only ones doing this stuff. Others use these techniques also, but most of the time, you have to visit the website itself, or one of its 5 or 10 partner sites. With facebook, damn near every news and social website, and probably 90% of all the others, have FB 'like' buttons...which means as soon as you land on a website with a 'like' button, they drop a tracking cookie for FB in your browser. A little gift that keeps on taking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Freebird]

There are a LOT of advertisers that put cookies on your machine without you ever visiting their page. If you browse the internet with third party cookies enabled, you will many in a very short time. The only way to really block them is to block third party cookies and then ad exceptions for sites that you visit frequently that won't let you enter without cookies enabled. Companies like AdClick, DoubleClick, Adblade and MANY others place cookies on your machine all the time even though you never visit their sites.

 

Though it is not well documented for obvious reasons, Google does offer some opt out options to opt out of many of the tracking cookies that companies put on your system. Here are a couple of links where you can do so.

 

http://www.google.com/settings/ads/onweb/?hl=en&hl=en&sig=ACi0TChQ-hI-sBOszjfv6d0UP63NCRXWIZlOVT-tnuc10EIGnAkCQvmRZTolihe_-3SuHWkFC_uRjxiYjQ-W2qYXB8mBPFQ1MQ&hl=en

 

http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp#

 

That being said, I do use Facebook and will continue to do so. I may not like everything that they do but at the same time, Facebook has allowed me to reconnect with some friends that I lost track of many years ago. There are a couple that I hadn't seen or heard from since the early 70's and though I had looked for them many times over the years, it was only through Facebook that I finally reconnected with them. I'm not extremely active on Facebook but I do have an account and I do use it.

[Freebird]

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. I enabled "accept third party cookies" on my browser. I went to my usual home page, Fox News. I cleared all my cookies except for Fox News and VentureRider.org. The first picture shows my cookies at that point. Then I simply refreshed my browser page one time, still on my home page of Fox News and the the second picture shows the cookies that were added. I never left Fox News and have never visited any of those other sites. Note, this is even though I am opted out at the links I previously posted.

 

Almost all major commercial websites to this.

[Freebird]

I meant to mention one other thing. You may notice that a Facebook cookie was NOT added to my computer. Fox News does indeed have Facebook and Twitter buttons or their pages so it apparently does not happen with all sites. It probably depends upon how each site implements the button and code.

 

After posting those pictures, I played around a bit more. I picked up a LOT more cookies at various FoxNews pages. I never did pick up a Facebook cookie but I DID pick up a Twitter cookie.

[BuddyRich]

Don't eat that cookie!!!

 

I'm done.... I deal with this crap on a daily basis, 24x7 most weeks.

[Guest tx2sturgis]

VEDY VEDY interesting. This Cookie Stumbler app seems to be rooting out all those persistant cookies I mentioned.

 

I am down from over 5000 detected tracking cookies to just 294. I'm still weeding the last persistant cookies one by one, manually.

 

Its interesting that this panel in Cookie Stumbler provides some info about those persistent cookies and where they like to hide, not just in the cookie cache, but in other places in the browser.

 

Sometimes the teacher is the student!

 

 

 

 

[Guest tx2sturgis]

An interesting add-on you can install for free, that limits the tracking capability of facebook, google, and twitter.

 

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK_E3Bjpe0E]DEFCON 19: Tracking the Trackers: How Our Browsing History Is Leaking into the Cloud - YouTube[/ame]

 

https://disconnect.me/

 

This add-on was written by a former engineer at google and doubleclick.

 

 

[FuzzyRSTD]

I am out. Never did like it anyhow. I thank you for this useful thread. I have wanted out for some time now. Glad it is gone in my humble opinion. I have voiced my opinions about it from the beginning and wondered why was it necessary now a days. Just send me a message here or e-mail. Better than, give me a call.

 

Fuzzy :thumbsup2:

[steamer]

Me and computers don't get along. Comes with being a baby boomer. I grew up with black and white TV. That was higt tech to us. So here I am trying my best to stay up to date, and probably losing the battle. So as far as what i think of facebook, Well I don't much like the fact that the younger generation don't seem to know how to have a conversation with each other with out tapping it out on a computer or smart phone. They seem to have forgot that its call a phone and they can actually talk to the person on the other end. Now with all that said, I can tell you that I have a facebook page. Why? well I have found that it does serve one very good function. It is just about the only way to find lost friends with out leaving your house. Because of this, I have found over sixty shipmates form my days in the navy,from back in the late 70's. This could never have been possible 15 years ago. This high tech magic box that i am using right now has given me the ability to make new friends that I probably would never have met otherwise. its like everything else in the world. Some good, some bad.

.

[dacheedah]

Don't use IE, change that browser out

[Guest tx2sturgis]

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-blamed-for-1-in-5-divorces-in-the-us/359

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/08/facebook-us-divorces

 

http://www.thejanedough.com/facebook-divorce/

 

 

Be careful on FB, especially if you are married and want to stay that way.

 

 

Edited May 25, 2012 by tx2sturgis

[JohnMidnight]

Yes I know how to clear the cookies, but this technology is called persistent cookies or evercookies. Getting rid of them does not work., they just come right back. I have watched this happen on my browser many times.

 

Just a bit of a jump in here: Evercookies... I hated that name. Its just a fancy name for a JAVA API. But overall its all stored on system, and yes they can be removed. If you happen to be rolling certain security toolbars from certain manufactures (ZoneAlarms Forcefield toolbar) running Chromes Incognito, and theres one other...

 

Anyway, this is where EverCookies usually get patched to:

http://samy.pl/evercookie/

Specifically, when creating a new cookie, it uses the following storage mechanisms when available: - Standard HTTP Cookies - Local Shared Objects (Flash Cookies) - Silverlight Isolated Storage - Storing cookies in RGB values of auto-generated, force-cached PNGs using HTML5 Canvas tag to read pixels (cookies) back out - Storing cookies in Web History - Storing cookies in HTTP ETags - Storing cookies in Web cache - window.name caching - Internet Explorer userData storage - HTML5 Session Storage - HTML5 Local Storage - HTML5 Global Storage

Nuking that isn't really all that hard, actually some programs do that for you. Some are free, some are not. Just be warry, some of those pay ones can screw you over as can the free ones.

 

Also some Firewalls also can by default prevent evercookies from forming as well. Though, I figure its time I go run a check to see how many "I" got. Its been a while, makes me wonder if I gotta rebuild the old blocker.

 

If I remember right... certain clean up programs help too... and it seems... I can't run my checker O.o

 

And I skipped FreeBird: Watch out for Flash Ads, and Ads in general. Those automatically load in cookies. WETHER YOU CLICK ON THEM OR NOT. Reason why I've got three ad blockers....

 

But tx2sturgis, good stuff.

Edited May 25, 2012 by JohnMidnight