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[minkbunny]

This is being discussed today as a big news story but don't all sites do this? If I go to a news site, I will see a Q ad op up or if I have looked at something on EBAY an ad for that type of product will show up elsewhere. Attorneys discussing it said this is the equivalent of "hacking" into your computer which is a federal crime unless done by a federal official.

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Apart from being thoroughly annoying with constant tinkering, pokes and farming games, Facebook has been most blighted by privacy issues.

Basically, it seems that Mark Zuckerberg laughs like a drain every time someone changes their privacy settings because, effectively, it does absolutely nothing. And now, some chap called Nik Cubrilovic is saying that Facebook are still able to track web pages you visit, even when you’re logged out of the social networking site.

According to Cubrilovic’s tests, Facebook doesn’t delete your cookies when you log out, rather, simply alters them. This means that your account information and other unique identifiable trails are still present in these cookies.

The result of this is that when you visit a website with a Facebook widget, your browser is still sending personally identifiable information back to Facebook.

“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,” Cubrilovic says. “They definitely have the information stored. As to what they do with it, you can only speculate.”

Facebook engineer Arturo Bejar has replied to this, saying that Facebook uses the data from logged-out cookies only to prevent spamming, phishing and other security risks. They add: “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.”

Cubrilovic makes the claims on his own blog, which if true, could be a serious violation of privacy. It looks like mining people’s information is more lucrative than mining for fuel.