Facebook allowed to read browser history?

RoyalMarine

Hi guys,

Are social networking sites like Facebook allowed to access your browser history etc?

I ask for the following reason.

Yesterday, I was on my computer at home and I searched my local cinema to find a viewing for a film. Went to the film and came home 2 hours later.

Went onto Facebook, and on the right side of my home page, it had a suggestion to review / rate the shopping center where the cinema is located.

Things to note:
1. I did not bring my phone with me. My location could not have been stored.
2. I did not ever view the cinema or shopping center page on my Facebook.
3. I did not ever tag or comment about that cinema or shopping center.

Only 2 possible explanations for this.

1. It was a complete and total fluke
2. Facebook obtained this info from my browser history.

Anyone else experience this or have any information on it?
I know websites have the ability to do this, but I would have thought that Facebook, being as it is, would have very specific privacy restrictions and this would clearly be one of those.

Reader1937

RoyalMarine wrote: »

Hi guys,

Are social networking sites like Facebook allowed to access your browser history etc?

I ask for the following reason.

Yesterday, I was on my computer at home and I searched my local cinema to find a viewing for a film. Went to the film and came home 2 hours later.

Went onto Facebook, and on the right side of my home page, it had a suggestion to review / rate the shopping center where the cinema is located.

Things to note:
1. I did not bring my phone with me. My location could not have been stored.
2. I did not ever view the cinema or shopping center page on my Facebook.
3. I did not ever tag or comment about that cinema or shopping center.

Only 2 possible explanations for this.

1. It was a complete and total fluke
2. Facebook obtained this info from my browser history.

Anyone else experience this or have any information on it?
I know websites have the ability to do this, but I would have thought that Facebook, being as it is, would have very specific privacy restrictions and this would clearly be one of those.

I have had similar issues, so perhaps not a fluke. Try to clear history, cookies etc after looking at something specific - say buying a car or something like that - then have a look at FB later and see if similar ads come up. I reset browser settings to scrub history etc when the browser is closed. It goes some way to solve the issue. There will always be something though - there is memory enough available for most sites to use IP recog now so the original idea of cookies is becoming redundant.

biko

Some info here
http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-how-facebook-is-tracking-your-internet-activity-2012-9?op=1

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

http://www.abine.com/how-donottrackme-works/

could use this or something like it if being tracked bothers you

12730 You blocked Facebook from tracking you 12730 times on other sites.

Thanks Obama

28064212

RoyalMarine wrote: »

Only 2 possible explanations for this.
1. It was a complete and total fluke
2. Facebook obtained this info from my browser history.

Or it was the work of third-party cookies from an ad-network. Example of how it works:

1. You visit your local cinema page
2. The page loads an advert from an ad-network. This ad also sets a cookie on your machine which contains details of the page you visited
3. You visit Facebook, which uses the same ad-network to serve more ads. The ad-network section on FB reads the cookie that was set earlier, and serves you relevant ads

RoyalMarine

Cheers digby. Using that now.

28064212, thanks for the info!

holystungun9

Does using FB on a google Incognito window keep it away from my history? I have only just started on Facebook and want to lock it down as much as possible.

28064212

holystungun9 wrote: »

Does using FB on a google Incognito window keep it away from my history? I have only just started on Facebook and want to lock it down as much as possible.

It doesn't have access to your browser history. Incognito mode will mean cookies won't be stored on your machine.

That doesn't mean that they don't record visits from your IP address on their server though. Example:

1. You visit your local cinema page
2. The page loads an advert from an ad-network. This image comes from the ad-network server, which means a request from your IP address goes to that server
3. You visit Facebook, which uses the same ad-network to serve more ads. The ad-network section on FB receives a request from your IP address, which it links to the other request it received on the local cinema page, so serves a cinema ad

Of course, IP addresses aren't very reliable for unique identification, so cookies are far more common

Robdub

If you wanna stop facebook and the thousands of other tracking websites out there from tracking you. One of the easiest ways is to use the cayova box. Its from a social network site doesn't share your information unless you choose to and i think they pay you aswel for any adds you watch ect. anyway its worth checking out, tis ridiculous all the stuff facebook does. www.cayova.com