Facebook spies on your off facebook activity to a ridiculous extent.

Burnsy

Burnsy

V.I.P. Member
Since I don't really use facebook I don't know if this is common knowledge but facebook has agreements with pretty much the whole of the internet where it gets cookie data from third party websites which track your activity and what you click on and buy and view and hits you with extremely personalized ads to the point where it was showing the exact products I was looking at from the exact website I was looking at them on. I knew facebook does do it but the mechanism of it is what is so abbhorrent. The sites which range from random study related websites, blogs, online shopping sites, news sites and literally everything under the sun sell or share your data with facebook without really informing you. The cookies you accept are generally assumed to be used just for the site itself storing your very basic information. 
It probably varies with websites and I probably just ran into one tracking and sharing everything but regardless it was an eye opener.

Here's how to get it to delete your previous stored data and stop it from getting more.
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-stop-facebook-from-spying-on-your-internet-activity
 
Yeah I really don't like the current state of these things. Of course, it's always been possible for things like your ISP to be able to see your history, but I really don't think there's any need for something like Facebook to track me because I loaded a blog with a "Like on Facebook" button on it. This makes the "well just don't use Facebook" argument fall on it's face, and should really be "don't use the internet".

Apparently Facebook even creates "shadow profiles" of people that aren't members - for instance, if you've never had a facebook account but appear in one of your friends pictures, facebook knows you exist and creates a profile in its systems with the super limited info it has.
I've only ever heard this once or twice and it was on Reddit, so I'm unsure of how true it is since I've not investigated myself. I don't see it as being an impossibility, though.

And yes, it's unfortunately not just Facebook doing these things. Adblocks are an absolute essential for browsing the web safely IMO - the actual adblocking functionality is just a secondary benefit. That's how out of hand things are.
 
apathy said:
Yeah I really don't like the current state of these things. Of course, it's always been possible for things like your ISP to be able to see your history, but I really don't think there's any need for something like Facebook to track me because I loaded a blog with a "Like on Facebook" button on it. This makes the "well just don't use Facebook" argument fall on it's face, and should really be "don't use the internet".

Apparently Facebook even creates "shadow profiles" of people that aren't members - for instance, if you've never had a facebook account but appear in one of your friends pictures, facebook knows you exist and creates a profile in its systems with the super limited info it has.
I've only ever heard this once or twice and it was on Reddit, so I'm unsure of how true it is since I've not investigated myself. I don't see it as being an impossibility, though.

And yes, it's unfortunately not just Facebook doing these things. Adblocks are an absolute essential for browsing the web safely IMO - the actual adblocking functionality is just a secondary benefit. That's how out of hand things are.
Click to expand...

I can believe the shadow profiles thing but how how you describe it. It's more likely it's just a collection of browsing data linked to an IP.
 
Not really very surprised by this, to be honest. We've known for a while the poor reputation of platforms and social-media giants like Facebook, and the data-mining purposes they now exist for. They say, 'nothing is offered free' and it certainly is the case that whilst using social media is free, it's use comes at great privacy costs.
 
They don’t really spy on your activity or record anything you do. You create a profile and you like different things like pages posts etc. They see what you like and they show ads for what you’re interested in. It’s the same way with cookies from websites. I don’t understand why people get so mad because they use a free social media service and the owners need to make money to keep it alive. What better way to make money with out charging people for it? Oh yeah ads. What better way to make more money with ads have people click on it... hmm what better way to make people click on them oh wait we have all this information that they shared on FB and why don’t we just show things they’re interested in.
 
Sometimes it can be weird. I've never searched for penny boards in my life but i spoke about one as a joke with someone at work and suddenly they're being thrown at me on Facebook. I'm no conspiracy theorist but sometimes it can be creepy
 

That is assuming they only take your browsing data for when you are on their site and only their site. When did you ever hear about them buying and selling cookie data from other third party websites which litter the internet? This is happening to all users who have not turned off the setting without their knowledge and it is a super scummy thing.
 
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