privacy

A funny thing happened to me on my way to Al Jazeera’s website, or rather, upon my return to Facebook. As soon as I returned to my Facebook tab, I received a Facebook pop-up asking me if I wanted to continue viewing facebook in English (UK). I surmised that the only reason that this pop-up came up, is because they were monitoring the websites that I visited and I had just visited a foreign website and viewed the English (UK) version. This kind of made me sit up and take notice.

I have always taken facebook’s privacy policy with a grain of salt....I have no expectation of privacy for anything I post or do on facebook and since I am not doing anything wrong, I didn’t really pay too much attention to their privacy policy. I think that a great majority of people feel the same way.

I decided to read their entire privacy policy - shame on me for not doing so before this.

This is the part that causes me concern and prompted me to send Facebook an email to clarify this privacy issue for me.

Access Device and Browser Information

. When you access Facebook from a computer, mobile phone, or other device, we may collect information from that device about your browser type, location, and IP address, as well as the pages you visit.

This is not a matter of FB knowing what information you make available publicly on their site; so they can use that information to market products and services to you and your FB friends. This is much more sinister. You have no control over what information they collect or who they share/sell it to. Their privacy policy, specifically the clause that I have referenced above, removes any boundaries that might otherwise limit the information they are allowed to collect. Simply logging on to FB grants permission to have everything you do on-line become potentially public information. This is not something you can OPT-OUT of either, it is their marketing strategy.

I bank and make purchases on-line. Given the number of times hackers have invaded FB in the past, I don’t think they have the ability to adequately protect protect the information that they collect. Assuming, that is, that you knew what information was collected in the first place and had a means of verifying that it was still safe and secure.

Facebook has yet to respond to my email. I requested clarification on 2 specific questions:

1. Does facebook collect information about the pages I visit ONLY when I am connected to facebook or even when I am NOT connected to facebook?

2. Will logging off of facebook first, keep the websites I view PRIVATE?

Whether or not I remain on FB will depend upon how they answer these questions. In the meantime, I will be sure to log off of Facebook before I log on to a secure website. Hopefully, but by no means certainly, this will be a way to block Facebook from monitoring that which I do not want monitored.