How Facebook is Playing Close Attention to Your Internet Activity
September 24, 2012
Those who choose not to “like” anything on Facebook for fear that the social media giant will use our interests, gender, location and other information against us, you may be right. Business Insider recently reported on some disconcerting news in the article “This is How Facebook is Tracking Your Internet Activity.”
According to the article, Facebook is indeed out to sell your personal information to advertisers through the use of “trackers.” Trackers are defined as “a request that a web page tries to make your browser perform that will share information intended to record, profile, or share your online activity.”
Albine privacy analyst Sarah Downey explained why users should pay more attention to trackers, and block them:
“In addition to invading your privacy, these tracking requests can consume large amounts of data. And transferring lots of data takes time. Generally, the more tracking requests on a website, the slower that website loads. That’s why DNT+ gets you surfing at 125% of the normal speed and with 90% of the bandwidth, compared to a browser without DNT+ running.”
While not all cookies are used for tracking purposes, some are just used to store information. However, it is the broader scope of these requests that is proving to be both problematic and scary.
Jasmine Ashton, September 24, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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