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Facebook is Stalking You (and how to block it)

ideashower.com — And here I thought that we were the ones doing the stalking on Facebook...

Who dugg this? Made popular Nov 9, 2007

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  • Falldog, on 11/14/2007, -2/+134Is it me or do the first few posts feel incredibly phony?
  • blitzer, on 11/14/2007, -0/+79Its Karma.
    I use facebook to stalk people.. and now its stalking me.
  • guymal, on 11/14/2007, -0/+65Same thing happened to me on Kongregate. At least the CEO of Kongregate posted a comment there about how they will be letting users disable this.
  • dvsbastard, on 11/09/2007, -1/+61Happened to me too! Thanks for the info!
  • worthone, on 11/09/2007, -1/+60Thanks for letting me know that useful bit of information! Oh- I mean, yeah they probably do.
  • erkokite, on 11/09/2007, -0/+29Kinda off-topic, but anyone know how to keep other people's apps (that you didn't add) from spamming your news feed?
  • patcheswfb, on 11/09/2007, -4/+24while I don't necessarily disagree with sited doing this, i think that users need to be more aware of it. Owners of facebook and other such places harvest that data, then look at it for trends so that they can serve their customers better to make it a better experience for them and keep them coming back. Casinos have been doing this for a long time, and while it can be considered sketchy, it does help them make the service they offer better. users need to be aware, however, that everything they do is being tracked though, so this is a great thing to get out there.
  • blitzer, on 11/09/2007, -0/+19Which is hitting on young innocent girls..?
  • bigballs8000, on 11/14/2007, -1/+20facebook is getting scary! its nuts how it pretty much puts your life online.
  • DiggzDE, on 11/11/2007, -0/+18Am I the only one in the world now that doesn't use facebook other than for the very original reason it was created?
  • Evoguy, on 11/09/2007, -0/+17Facebook placed a cookie on your computer with a unique identifer in it, then the javascript embedded on the busted tees site forwarded that cookie identifier to facebook. It works because the facebook beacon javascript runs within a hidden iframe that loads the same domain as the cookie originator (facebook.com).
  • chaosmachine, on 11/09/2007, -2/+19This would be awesome on porn sites...
  • tonaros, on 11/14/2007, -0/+16Yeah, I was really impressed by that.
  • shlolz, on 11/09/2007, -0/+13Ever heard of cookies?
  • Pause, on 11/09/2007, -1/+14You can't.
  • micropizzle, on 11/09/2007, -5/+17Golly gee! Thanks!

    Fake much?
  • inactive, on 11/09/2007, -1/+13Message your friends to stop adding spammy apps.
  • ChuqAU, on 11/09/2007, -0/+11I would like someone to explain how this happened:
    I go to BustedTees and buy some T-shirts. I create an account so I enter in my details (the email address I use is different on each site) and pay via C/C.
    Come back to Facebook, there is a message at the top telling me that BustedTees wants to announce to the world that I bought "Pedro lacks political experience".
    Now I don't mind sites sending details like that, if I have to approve them first, but what confused me is HOW did they match up my facebook account and bustedtees account? I'm not in any BustedTees groups or applications on FB; I have my address in both, but one would had to have shared details with the other. Is it the fact that I was logged in to both sites on the same machine at the same time?
  • Skooma714, on 11/10/2007, -0/+10At first glance I thought Kongregate was part of KDE.
  • inactive, on 11/09/2007, -0/+10Yeah your mom bakes them and invites me over sometimes. Tell her i said thanks
  • fuzzynyanko, on 11/14/2007, -0/+10Kongregate seems to really care about its users. I was about to post that onto their forums until I saw the comment.
  • inactive, on 11/09/2007, -3/+12All the alpha geeks I know who were early adopters on Facebook are leaving now, anyway.
  • skidooer, on 11/09/2007, -0/+8If you want to block Facebook entirely, sure.
  • MScrip, on 11/11/2007, -0/+8I use Facebook for messaging and photo sharing... and the occasional Wall comment. I have no use for pirates and zombies or any of the other silly apps.
  • iofthestorm, on 11/09/2007, -0/+8Actually, I think there's an option under notification options that lets you not get emails from apps. Not sure about notifications in news feed though, I agree it's really annoying.
  • davidrools, on 11/09/2007, -0/+7After reading the disclaimer, I don't install ANY apps. It basically says the 3rd party apps can read all your profile information and do whatever they want with it. No thanks, no matter how much I want to write inappropriate graffiti on my friends' profiles.
  • xkrwlng, on 11/09/2007, -0/+799% of Facebook's custom "applications" suck ass. half of them don't even work, and the ones that do are myspace-ugly, and equally hard to use.
  • Lapper, on 11/09/2007, -0/+6Jim Greer++ for taking the initiative to snipe the first comment and address the issue. :P
  • kevptim, on 11/09/2007, -2/+8But who is stalking Facebook?
  • breily, on 11/09/2007, -1/+6thats not how this works - I don't have the Kongregate app, I've never even heard of it so theres no way its installed. I was just on Kongregate and it tried to contact Facebook.
  • BrettTheUser, on 11/14/2007, -1/+6I'd feel better about facebook doing this if I didn't have to adjust my privacy settings every time they change something on the site. It seems like every time they do, eventually I'll stumble across some obscure setting while wandering around the privacy settings weeks later. If they'd just tell us what they're doing, or had max privacy levels set by default, there wouldn't be *much* of a problem.
  • mlostracco, on 11/09/2007, -0/+5I like how she says what's NOT changing is that "Facebook will always stay clutter-free and clean."

    Uh, it hasn't been like that since they opened up apps to outside developers. Now it's all lame zombie bites, stupid virtual food fights, gigantic fortune cookies and obscene SuperWall garbage. Not to mention the endless, ENDLESS group invitations to take someone's idiotic quiz or profess your enthusiasm for some sports team.
  • mercurysquad, on 11/09/2007, -0/+5"For example, adding the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to your queue on Blockbuster.com might be something you want your friends to know about, so you can have a marathon."

    No.
  • stephbangm, on 11/11/2007, -0/+5All these social networking sites are stalking you! They ask for your birthdate, college, work info, etc. Duh!
  • MalDON, on 11/09/2007, -0/+5Me, actually. I'm on to their game. At 9pm tonight, Mark Z. takes a shower and uses hand lotion on his privates.
  • BevansDesign, on 11/09/2007, -0/+4Complain about it to Facebook whenever you can. If enough of us complain, they might rework app permissions (or something...I don't know how it works) to prevent them from spamming. They definitely need to get rid of the "send this to everyone" pages that so many apps go out of their way to point people to.
  • op12, on 11/09/2007, -0/+4Yeah, this is different. When you're on Kongregate it does a javascript call to Facebook with information on your activities. That then appears on Facebook.
  • xstarsprinklesx, on 11/09/2007, -0/+4If you use Safari instead of FF, you can block it with PithHelmet.
  • inactive, on 11/09/2007, -1/+5Ah *****! I can't believe you've done this.
  • op12, on 11/09/2007, -0/+4But at least they offer the option on their own site to not do the Facebook call. You can be sure that many of the other sites that implement this will say you can turn it off in Facebook and not offer their own option, which would mean Facebook still gets the information.
  • atskv9, on 11/09/2007, -0/+4I wonder if my NoScript extension will take care of this...?
  • mhuggins, on 11/09/2007, -0/+4they're
  • Twister47, on 11/14/2007, -0/+3"Additional websites and companies participating in Beacon at launch include AllPosters.com, Blockbuster, Bluefly.com, CBS Interactive (CBSSports.com & Dotspotter), ExpoTV, Gamefly, Hotwire, Joost, Kiva, Kongregate, LiveJournal, Live Nation, Mercantila, National Basketball Association, NYTimes.com, Overstock.com, (RED), Redlight, SeamlessWeb, Sony Online Entertainment LLC, Sony Pictures, STA Travel, The Knot, TripAdvisor, Travel Ticker, TypePad, viagogo, Vox, Yelp, WeddingChannel.com and Zappos.com"
    Read more: http://www.facebook.com/business/?beacon
  • erkokite, on 11/09/2007, -0/+3Will it work with adblock as well as the block site extension?
  • MalDON, on 11/09/2007, -1/+4So Microsoft has already started to ***** the site up. Figures.
  • UtopiaInTheSky, on 11/09/2007, -1/+4Spyware? How exactly does a website know what I'm doing elsewhere?
  • DiggzDE, on 11/09/2007, -0/+3No, that is myspace. Facebook was originally created for college students only.
  • roboticelephant, on 11/09/2007, -1/+3Yeah, and us college students aren't allowed to have friends still in high school that we want to keep in touch with. Seriously.
  • vastrightwing, on 11/09/2007, -0/+2The whole idea of taking things, assuming you're OK with it and allowing you to say no, is like people coming up to you and taking your belongings, but then giving them back if you ask them for it back. These are our “privacy” laws.

    There is nothing private about them.

    However, we live in a society that accepts this behavior; be aware and protect yourself. Your government will not.
  • spyd3rweb, on 11/09/2007, -0/+2its like that evil ex girlfriend that wont go away and always calls you.
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