Warning : FaceBook spying on you, even when you are logged off from it!

Hi everyone,

A few weeks ago I decided to leave Facebook, it was a hard decision since many of my friends and family are on facebook and it is one of the ways we have been following each others lives lately, plus it was nice to be able to feel close to them even thought we are so far away.

Facebook has become a giant spy machine, even with the help of my ad blocker, the script blocker all the spyware catchers, I have seen it sneaking into our private lives and step by step taking away almost everything we feel as 'our own' and put it in the hands of highest bidding buyers. The decision became final when FB helped UK police to track and imprison people who participated in the riots in London a few months ago as well as their continuous harassment of peaceful pro-Palestinian groups by closing their pages and accounts without any explanations or warnings.

The first proof came from Sweden, the FB management had to answer to some questions from the Swedish 'data inspektionen' that is the main legal authority in Sweden protecting citizens privacy and preventing companies from abusing it. The admitted that the posting and 'likes' of every individual user on FB has been captured and sold to several companies and to help them find the right advertisement for the individuals via direct mail (via FB status and ads, e-mail, SMS or direct phone calls). 

The second even scarier story came out the other day from Nik Cubrilovic (Entrepreneur, hacker and writer) who provided us with an alarming and dangerous act by FB that makes it possible to follow every 'digital' move of all the FB user even when they are logged off FB.

http://nikcub.appspot.com/logging-out-of-facebook-is-not-enough

His blog is pretty technical, but to summarize it, it means that EVERYTIME you visit a web site that has integrated FB into it, your page visits are tracked by FB and reported back to their database. 

"With my browser logged out of Facebook, whenever I visit any page with a Facebook like button, or share button, or any other widget, the information, including my account ID, is still being sent to Facebook,"

"They definitely have the information stored," Cubrilovic told VentureBeat in an interview today. "As to what they do with it, you can only speculate."

The other minor issue is the new integration of Spotify and FB, which means EVERYONE will know what music you are listening to, by everyone, it means your friends and your family, their friends and family and all their friends and families which makes it a VERY LARGE group of people!

Facebook recently integrated itself with Spotify, and now posts every song you play on Spotify to Facebook for all your friends to see (you may have opted in to this feature without even realizing it). If you'd like to keep your Justin Bieber obsession private, though, here's how to turn off Spotify's new Facebook features.
http://lifehacker.com/5843847/how-to-keep-spotify-from-broadcasting-your-music-taste-to-all-of-facebook

Nothing special here, but who knows what else FB is sharing with the whole world?

I chose the easy way out, I cut my connection to FB, lost all my contacts and blocked all the following sites

facebook.com 
facebook.net 
fbcdn.com 
fbcdn.net

to access my browser with the help of my ad blocker and script blockers.

I am not saying you should do it too, but this is something to think about next time you receive an e-mail or SMS from those you don't know and wonder where they got your information!

Cheers,

Farhad