One More Time: Facebook Tracks Everyone

May 27th, 2016

2011: Facebook Is Building Shadow Profiles of Non-Users

Countermeasures, EasyPrivacy:

EasyPrivacy is an optional supplementary filter list that completely removes all forms of tracking from the internet, including web bugs, tracking scripts and information collectors, thereby protecting your personal data.

Via: Gizmodo:

There is no escaping Facebook’s advertising reach. The social network has announced that it will now be foisting ads on to every single person who uses third-party sites that are signed up to its advertising scheme, regardless of whether the user has a Facebook account or not.

Until now, Facebook showed ads only to its members when people landed on third-party sites that were signed up to its Audience Network ad system. That meant that it only ever bothered tracking what Facebook users did, in order to learn about them and better target advertising.

Now, though, reports the Wall Street Journal, it will use the same techniques—largely plug-in and cookies, but also Like buttons too— in order to track what everyone does when visiting those web pages. Andrew Bosworth, vice president of Facebook’s ads and business platform, explained to the Journal:

“Our buttons and plugins send over basic information about users’ browsing sessions. For non-Facebook members, previously we didn’t use it. Now we’ll use it to better understand how to target those people.”

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