Facebook’s data harvesting problems continue to grow.
Mozilla has launched an extension for its Firefox Browser which helps you segregate your web activity from Facebook’s spy apparatus, by isolating your identity into a separate “container.”
This makes it difficult for Facebook to track your activity on other websites using third-party cookies.
You can install the Firefox extension here.
Zerohedge reports that upon installation, the extension deletes your Facebook cookies and logs you out of Facebook. The next time you visit the social media giant, it will open in a special blue browser “container” tab – which you can use to safely log in to Facebook and use it like you normally would. If you then click on a link that takes you outside of Facebook, it will load outside of the container.
Should you click on any Facebook Share buttons on other browser tabs it will load them within the Facebook container. You should know that when you’re using these buttons information will be sent to Facebook about the website that you shared from.
If you use your Facebook credentials to create an account or log in using your Facebook credentials, it may not work properly and you may not be able to login. Also, because you’re logged into Facebook in the container tab, embedded Facebook comments and Like buttons in tabs outside the Facebook container tab will not work. This prevents Facebook from associating information about your activity on websites outside of Facebook to your Facebook identity. So it may look different than what you are used to seeing. –Mozilla.org
Mozilla notes that it “does not collect data from your use of the Facebook Container extension,” adding “We only know the number of times the extension is installed or removed.”
One Reddit user asks “why not just make every tab an isolated container? “There should be NO REASON for one tab to know or read what another tab (aka cookies) are doing from another domain,” states /u/Pro2U
The Mozilla programmer who created the extension also chimed in on the thread to answer the question…
What you describe is actually possible in Firefox. It’s called “First Party Isolation”: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/FirstPartyIsolation
When we studied various privacy protections, FPI had a higher amount of website breakage reported by users: https://blog.mozilla.org/data/2018/01/26/improving-privacy-without-breaking-the-web/ -/u/groovecoder
Bottom line: If you don’t want Facebook harvesting your data and tracking your every move install the Firefox extension.
Meanwhile Playboy announced that it will deactivate its Facebook pages to protest the social media company’s exploitation of user data for commercial profit, according to CNBC.
Cooper Hefner, Playboy’s chief creative officer and son of the late Hugh Hefner, accused Facebook of being “sexually repressive” and said Facebook’s policy guidelines “continue contradicting our values.”
We are stepping away from Facebook pic.twitter.com/4yFIdk2eDE
— Cooper Hefner (@cooperhefner) March 28, 2018
Playboy said in a statement…
“The recent news about Facebook’s alleged mismanagement of users’ data has solidified our decision to suspend our activity on the platform at this time.”
“There are more than 25 million fans who engage with Playboy via our various Facebook pages, and we do not want to be complicit in exposing them to the reported practices. That is why we have announced that we will be leaving Facebook’s platform, deactivating the Playboy accounts that Playboy Enterprises manages directly.”
Via Zerohedge…
The firm said it has “always stood for personal freedom and the celebration of sex,” and that its move to deactivate platforms on Facebook was “another step in that ongoing fight.”
Playboy, of course, isn’t the first company to shutter its Facebook page. Longtime Mark Zuckerberg rival Elon Musk said earlier this week that he’d deactivate Tesla’s and SpaceX’s Facebook pages.
Meanwhile, Mozilla and Commerzbank have suspended advertising campaigns.
In an effort to assuage users’ fears following revelations about the vast trove of data that Facebook (and its tech behemoth peers) collect and leverage for commercial purposes, Facebook is allowing users to see all the data that Facebook has collected – and, as one twitter pointed out, the full extent of the company’s data collection is much larger than one might expect.
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