Covert Facebook Tracking

     Do you trust your social network (Myspace, Facebook, etc.) with your identity? Do you want the world to know every intimate detail about you? Like it or not, it goes on behind the scenes. Unless you’re real careful.

Facebook was receiving data about my online habits while I was not logged in, and was doing so silently, without even alerting me to the cross-site communication.

     We already knew ad agencies had profiles on us from the little breadcrumb trails we leave behind on web, which are pieced together cubist portraits of us used to attract “targeted” advertising dollars. Then we went one step further and voluntarily created profiles about ourselves online, making it even easier for advertisers to connect all our dots. We announced: Here I am, come and get me! From an advertiser’s point of view, all this data about us, all these breadcrumbs want to “phone home” back to our Myspace/Facebook identity.

If a user has ever checked the option for Facebook to “remember me” — which saves the user from having to log on to the site upon every return to it — Facebook can tie the user’s activities on third-party Beacon sites directly to the user, even if he or she is logged off and has opted out of the broadcast. If a user never chose that option, the information still flows back to Facebook, although without it being tied to the person’s Facebook ID, according to Berteau.