Samantha Felix
Business Insider
Sept 10, 2012

Facebook really is watching your every move online.

In testing out a new diagnostic tool called Abine DNT+, we noticed that Facebook has more than 200 “trackers” watching our internet activity.

Skip directly to see our findings >

Abine defines trackers as “a request that a webpage tries to make your browser perform that will share information intended to record, profile, or share your online activity.” The trackers come in the shape of cookies, Javascript, 1-pixel beacons, and Iframes.

Cookies are tiny bits of software that web pages drop onto your device that identify you anonymously but nonetheless signal useful behavior about your background interests to advertisers who might want to target you.

Critics call this spying. Advertisers call it targeting.

'We didn't mean to track you' says Facebook as social network giant admits to 'bugs' in new privacy row.

Facebook has admitted that it has been watching the web pages its members visit – even when they have logged out.

In its latest privacy blunder, the social networking site was forced to confirm that it has been constantly tracking its 750million users, even when they are using other sites.

The social networking giant says the huge privacy breach was simply a mistake - that software automatically downloaded to users' computers when they logged in to Facebook 'inadvertently' sent information to the company, whether or not they were logged in at the time.

Most would assume that Facebook stops monitoring them after they leave its site, but technology bloggers discovered this was not the case.

In fact, data has been regularly sent back to the social network’s servers – data that could be worth billions when creating 'targeted' advertising based on the sites users visit.

The website’s practices were exposed by Australian technology blogger Nik Cubrilovic and have provoked a furious response across the internet.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2042573/Facebook-privacy-row-Social-network-giant-admits-bugs.html#ixzz265LeNE2E