Facebook - the enemy within?
As Carry On Langport likes irony and nonsense (most of the time) then why not, the editor thought, go for something deadly serious on this April Fools' Day of 2015.
While it's largely thanks to sharing on Facebook that this blog has reached a huge number of regular readers in a very short time, some consider the way it tracks what we're doing to be a major invasion of our privacy. Extraordinarily, even for people who aren't members. Check out this article from a national newspaper this week.
Facebook tracks the web browsing of everyone who visits a page on its site even if the user does not have an account or has explicitly opted out of tracking in the EU, extensive research commissioned by the Belgian data protection agency has revealed.
The report, from researchers at the Centre of Interdisciplinary Law and ICT (ICRI) and the Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography department (Cosic) at the University of Leuven, and the media, information and telecommunication department (Smit) at Vrije Universiteit Brussels, was commissioned after an original draft report revealed Facebook’s privacy policy breaches European law.
The researchers now claim that Facebook tracks computers of users without their consent, whether they are logged in to Facebook or not, and even if they are not registered users of the site or explicitly opt out in Europe. Facebook tracks users in order to target advertising.
The issue revolves around Facebook’s use of its social plugins such as the “Like” button, which has been placed on more than 13m sites including health and government sites.
Facebook places tracking cookies on users’ computers if they visit any page on the facebook.com domain, including fan pages or other pages that do not require a Facebook account to visit.
When a user visits a third-party site that carries one of Facebook’s social plug-ins, it detects and sends the tracking cookies back to Facebook - even if the user does not interact with the Like button, Facebook Login or other extension of the social media site. (with thanks to The Guardian)
Many readers may react to this with "well, if you've got nothing to hide then why worry?" while others might think of the lyrics to the Manic Street Preachers song:
"If you tolerate this, then your children will be next."
Either way - go and update your Facebook Wall now with "Just been reading Carry On Langport" - that's far more important!
(This blog doesn't track you either - I already know where you all are)
Editor of Levelling Langport magazine Andrew Lee, above, was stunned by The Guardian's revelations and immediately changed his Facebook status from 'daft' to 'disgusted'
