Facebook Is Tracking Me Even Though I'm Not on Facebook

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: April 10, 2018 at 5:33:19 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Facebook Is Tracking Me Even Though I'm Not on Facebook
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> Facebook Is Tracking Me Even Though I’m Not on Facebook
> Facebook collects data about people who have never even opted in. But there are ways these non-users can protect 
> themselves.
> By Daniel Kahn Gillmor, Senior Staff Technologist, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project
> Apr 5 2018
> <https://medium.com/aclu/facebook-is-tracking-me-even-though-im-not-on-facebook-ee7a23429711>
>
> I don’t use Facebook. I’m not technophobic — I’m a geek. I’ve been using email since the early 1990s, I have accounts 
> on hundreds of services around the net, and I do software development and internet protocol design both for work and 
> for fun. I believe that a globe-spanning communications network like the internet can be a positive social force, and 
> I publish much of my own work on the open web.
>
> But Facebook and other massive web companies represent a strong push toward unaccountable centralized social control, 
> which I think makes our society more unequal and more unjust. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is one instance of this 
> long-running problem with what I call the “surveillance economy.” I don’t want to submit to these power structures, 
> and I don’t want my presence on such platforms to serve as bait that lures other people into the digital panopticon.
>
> But while I’ve never “opted in” to Facebook or any of the other big social networks, Facebook still has a detailed 
> profile that can be used to target me. I’ve never consented to having Facebook collect my data, which can be used to 
> draw very detailed inferences about my life, my habits, and my relationships. As we aim to take Facebook to task for 
> its breach of user trust, we need to think about what its capabilities imply for society overall. After all, if you 
> do #deleteFacebook, you’ll find yourself in my shoes: non-consenting, but still subject to Facebook’s globe-spanning 
> surveillance and targeting network.
>
> There are at least two major categories of information available to Facebook about non-participants like me: 
> information from other Facebook users, and information from sites on the open web.
>
> Information from other Facebook users
>
> When you sign up for Facebook, it encourages you to upload your list of contacts so that the site can “find your 
> friends.” Facebook uses this contact information to learn about people, even if those people don’t agree to 
> participate. It also links people together based on who they know, even if the shared contact hasn’t agreed to this 
> use.
>
> For example, I received an email from Facebook that lists the people who have all invited me to join Facebook: my 
> aunt, an old co-worker, a friend from elementary school, etc. This email includes names and email addresses — 
> including my own name — and at least one web bug designed to identify me to Facebook’s web servers when I open the 
> email. Facebook records this group of people as my contacts, even though I’ve never agreed to this kind of data 
> collection.
>
> Similarly, I’m sure that I’m in some photographs that someone has uploaded to Facebook — and I’m probably tagged in 
> some of them. I’ve never agreed to this, but Facebook could still be keeping track.
>
> So even if you decide you need to join Facebook, remember that you might be giving the company information about 
> someone else who didn’t agree to be part of its surveillance platform.
>
> Information from sites on the open Web
>
> Nearly every website that you visit that has a “Like” button is actually encouraging your browser to tell Facebook 
> about your browsing habits. Even if you don’t click on the “Like” button, displaying it requires your browser to send 
> a request to Facebook’s servers for the “Like” button itself. That request includes information mentioning the name 
> of the page you are visiting and any Facebook-specific cookies your browser might have collected. (See Facebook’s own 
> description of this process.) This is called a “third-party request.”
>
> This makes it possible for Facebook to create a detailed picture of your browsing history — even if you’ve never even 
> visited Facebook directly, let alone signed up for a Facebook account.
>
> Think about most of the web pages you’ve visited — how many of them don’t have a “Like” button? If you administer a 
> website and you include a “Like” button on every page, you’re helping Facebook to build profiles of your visitors, 
> even those who have opted out of the social network. Facebook’s “Share” buttons on other sites — along with other 
> tools — work a bit differently from the “Like” button, but do effectively the same thing.
>
> The profiles that Facebook builds on non-users don’t necessarily include so-called “personally identifiable 
> information” (PII) like names or email addresses. But they do include fairly unique patterns. Using Chromium’s NetLog 
> dumping, I performed a simple five-minute browsing test last week that included visits to various sites — but not 
> Facebook. In that test, the PII-free data that was sent to Facebook included information about which news articles I 
> was reading, my dietary preferences, and my hobbies.
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/
> Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp



-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=18849915&id_secret=18849915-aa268125
Unsubscribe Now: 
https://www.listbox.com/unsubscribe/?member_id=18849915&id_secret=18849915-32545cb4&post_id=20180410071855:F319C93E-3CB0-11E8-9CF8-85374FE01C87
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com