4 ms·

Matt Cutts from Google deactivates his Facebook account

8 points by keltex 16y ago

pedalpete 16y ago
Assuming that a large number of people are deactivating their FB accounts due to the recent privacy 'issues', is this really accomplishing the goal they are attempting. As Matt points out, you can always revive your FB account later, which means FB is keeping all of your information. I assume this also means that FB is continuing to share the information they already have on you. Therefore, aren't you better off just turning off the sharing features and not using the 'like' button or other FB tools on the web. You can still get the benefits of having FB and take privacy into your own hands.
- bigiain 16y ago
  You need to ensure you're also not returning cookies to facebook's domain. The iframes that other sites use for their "like" buttons allow facebook to link your facebook identity with your browsing of those external-to-facebook sites (and I assume they've done some deals with Yelp, docs.com, and Pandora which leaks your personal details to them in return). If I find some spare time I'm going to set facebook.com to resolve to 127.0.0.1 and run a logging proxy which knows facebooks real ip address, to let me see (and control) what my browser(s) send to facebook (I'm thinking all instances of my facebook user id will get replaced with a random number, or perhaps with "4" to screw with Zuck's demographics...)
  - pedalpete 16y ago
    it would be really interesting to hear what you find. Maybe a grease monkey script could block the facebook cookie gathering on non-fb sites.
jmount 16y ago
What privacy leak is Facebook implementing that GMail Buzz is not also attempting?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- ableal 16y ago
  The guys at TheRegister went a bit into that: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/23/google_on_facebook_open_graph/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/23/google_on_facebook_o... (Not much, but had some info. Submitted here last week: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1294542 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1294542 )

8 points by keltex 16y ago

Assuming that a large number of people are deactivating their FB accounts due to the recent privacy 'issues', is this really accomplishing the goal they are attempting. As Matt points out, you can always revive your FB account later, which means FB is keeping all of your information. I assume this also means that FB is continuing to share the information they already have on you. Therefore, aren't you better off just turning off the sharing features and not using the 'like' button or other FB tools on the web. You can still get the benefits of having FB and take privacy into your own hands.

bigiain 16y ago
You need to ensure you're also not returning cookies to facebook's domain. The iframes that other sites use for their "like" buttons allow facebook to link your facebook identity with your browsing of those external-to-facebook sites (and I assume they've done some deals with Yelp, docs.com, and Pandora which leaks your personal details to them in return). If I find some spare time I'm going to set facebook.com to resolve to 127.0.0.1 and run a logging proxy which knows facebooks real ip address, to let me see (and control) what my browser(s) send to facebook (I'm thinking all instances of my facebook user id will get replaced with a random number, or perhaps with "4" to screw with Zuck's demographics...)
- pedalpete 16y ago
  it would be really interesting to hear what you find. Maybe a grease monkey script could block the facebook cookie gathering on non-fb sites.

jmount 16y ago

What privacy leak is Facebook implementing that GMail Buzz is not also attempting?

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
ableal 16y ago
The guys at TheRegister went a bit into that: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/23/google_on_facebook_open_graph/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/23/google_on_facebook_o... (Not much, but had some info. Submitted here last week: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1294542 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1294542 )