Facebook's Cookie Storage and what it means to you.

[spelsylver]

For those of you who do not follow Facebook's constantly changing privacy agreement, it has once again received some alarming updates. The most alarming of the changes to the online "privacy" statement is the way Facebook is aggressively storing every individual user's browsing cookies. If you are not familiar with "browsing cookies" they are little scripts run by websites that you visit and other 3rd party sites, and they are stored in your browser. Facebook is now, and has been for awhile, tracking these cookies and accumulating massive amounts of data on the general public. These cookies are being tracked and stored in Facebook's database even when you are logged out of Facebook and browsing a site that has nothing at all to do with Facebook. Facebook also stores any messages or chats that you now have permanently, even if you delete them, they are still property of Facebook and are stored in their database. So just a tip to all of you guys, not trying to sound super paranoid, just letting you know that Facebook is tracking every single thing you do while you are online. Make sure you always manually delete your browser cookies, and browse using the "In-private" option in most browsers. Below are a few links to some news articles relating to Facebook's ever-evolving "privacy" statement. I encourage any facebook users to do thier own research on the subject.


http://www.smh.com.au/technology/tec...004-1l61i.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/fac...ry?id=14673082

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/10/04/cookies/

Google and other engines do similar things.. If the public knew what google can do and does, they would cry foul..

For all of you who don't really want to do away with your facebook, you can dig around in your browser settings and completely disable your cookie storage. Enable it temporarily every time you log in, and disable it when you log out. Do not visit any other sites while simultaneously browsing facebook, and always clear all your browsing data upon the end of your session. Most of this data is being sold for huge amounts of money to marketing firms and advertisement agencies, but lately LEO has been combing through it here in the US.