Seems Facebook can’t get away from egregious violations of privacy rights…the latest news indicating that their use of tracking cookies which send them data about your use of websites that carry the facebook “like” button (common on news sites, blogs, etc.) regardless of whether you’re a facebook user or have opted out of tracking. Apparently this violates EU Privacy Laws which require advance notification of tracking. They claim they are using the information for “targeted advertising” – but without any real oversight about their use of information, can we trust them?
And then there’s this little gem: “If people who are not being tracked by Facebook use the ‘opt out’ mechanism proposed for the EU, Facebook places a long-term, uniquely identifying cookie, which can be used to track them for the next two years,” explained Günes Acar from Cosic, who also co-wrote the report. “What’s more, we found that Facebook does not place any long-term identifying cookie on the opt-out sites suggested by Facebook for US and Canadian users.” “Facebook sets an opt-out cookie on all the opt-out sites, but this cookie cannot be used for tracking individuals since it does not contain a unique identifier. Why Facebook places the “datr” cookie on computers of EU users who opt out is unknown.”
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