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Nothing is free and the price you pay for using many popular web services is letting them track your internet activity.
So if that makes you slightly uncomfortable here you go…
I protect myself from Facebook tracking me by using a Fluid browser for Facebook. Because I paid the US$5 to register the app, I can use separate cookies from Safari.
For more detailed instructions on how to fight the law go here.
Or you can do like me and delete your time sucking Facebook account.
So I already knew about how Facebook (like many other sites) tracks your online activity after you log off their site, by the rest of this stuff…
Facebook makes money by selling ad space to companies that want to reach us. Advertisers choose key words or details — like relationship status, location, activities, favorite books and employment — and then Facebook runs the ads for the targeted subset of its 845 million users. If you indicate that you like cupcakes, live in a certain neighborhood and have invited friends over, expect an ad from a nearby bakery to appear on your page. The magnitude of online information Facebook has available about each of us for targeted marketing is stunning. In Europe, laws give people the right to know what data companies have about them, but that is not the case in the United States.
It’s interesting to note that when they found Osama Bin Laden he had a computer but it was not connected to the internet, because he knew that all your online activity may be monitored by somebody.
So we must assume that everything that we do online could monitored and that information may be being sold to 3rd parties.
Material mined online has been used against people battling for child custody or defending themselves in criminal cases. LexisNexis has a product called Accurint for Law Enforcement, which gives government agents information about what people do on social networks. The Internal Revenue Service searches Facebook and MySpace for evidence of tax evaders’ income and whereabouts, and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has been known to scrutinize photos and posts to confirm family relationships or weed out sham marriages. Employers sometimes decide whether to hire people based on their online profiles, with one study indicating that 70 percent of recruiters and human resource professionals in the United States have rejected candidates based on data found online. A company called Spokeo gathers online data for employers, the public and anyone else who wants it. The company even posts ads urging “HR Recruiters — Click Here Now!” and asking women to submit their boyfriends’ e-mail addresses for an analysis of their online photos and activities to learn “Is He Cheating on You?”
via new york times
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