Home » , , » Tracking Facebook is under scrutiny

Tracking Facebook is under scrutiny

In recent weeks, Facebook has been a dispute with the Federal Trade Commission about the site of the social environment violates users' privacy by disclosing too much of their personal information.

Facebook officials now admit that the social media giant was able to create a working log of web pages that each of its 800 million or so members visited during the previous 90 days. Facebook also keeps close track of where millions of people who are not members of social networks are going to the Internet, visiting web pages,To do this, the company relies on technology like tracking cookies on the controversial system used by Google, Adobe, Microsoft, Yahoo and others in the industry of online advertising, said Arturo Bejar, technical director of Facebook.
Facebook effort to track the browsing habits of visitors to your web site made the company a player in the "Do Not Track" debate, which focuses on whether consumers should be able to prevent websites from tracking consumers' online activity.
For business on the Internet and social media sites, such information may be particularly valuable in helping them to tailor online advertising to specific users. But privacy advocates worry about how more information can be used, and whether it could be sold to third parties.

If privacy advocates get their way, consumers may soon have the right to suspend or restrict technology companies and advertising networks to track them wherever they go online. But the online advertising industry has dug its heels in, trying to keep the current system of self-regulation.


Includes internet tracking technology, technology companies and advertising networks use over ten years to help advertisers over relevant ads to each viewer. So far, Facebook, which makes most of its revenue from advertising, was ambiguous in his public statements about the extent to which it collects data tracking.
It argues that it does not belong in the same camp as Google, Microsoft and other major players in the industry of online classifieds. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made it a point to interviewer Charlie Rose on national television last week.
In the past few weeks, Zuckerberg and Facebook and other officials tried to allocate as Facebook and others use the tracking data. Facebook uses such information only to improve safety and as a "Like" button, and the like Facebook plug-ins to perform, Bejart told USA TODAY. Plug-ubiquitous web applications that allow you to connect to the service Facebook from millions of third-party Web pages.
Facebook representative Andrew Noyes said the company "has no plans to change the way we use these data." He also said that the company's intentions, "in sharp contrast to many advertising networks and data brokers who knowingly and in many cases secretly track people to create profiles of their behavior, to sell that content to the highest bidder, or to use this content targeted advertising . "


conflicting pressures    
Instead, to appease his critics, Facebook, public explanation of how it tracks and how it uses the tracking data has caused a flurry of questions from technologists, privacy advocates, regulators and lawmakers around the world.
"Facebook may be tracking users without the knowledge or permission, which may be unfair or deceptive business practices," said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., co-authored with Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, a bill aimed at limiting the online tracking of children.
The company "should be covered by strong guarantees of privacy," says Mark. "The massive treasure the personal information that is stored on its Facebook users can have a significant impact on them - now and in the future."
After Zuckerberg appeared on the Charlie Rose TV show last week, Mark and Barton sent a letter to the 27-year-old general manager asked him to explain why Facebook recently filed a U.S. patent for technology that includes a method to correlate the tracking data from the ads. They gave Zuckerberg December 1 deadline for a response.
"We have patented a lot of things, and future products should not be inferred from our patent application," Facebook representative Barry Schnitt corporate says.
He has to prove its global financial backers that he is worthy of hundreds of millions of dollars they poured into the company's financial and technical analysts say. Those investors include Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Russia investment company Digital Sky Technologies, Hong Kong financier Sir Ka-Shing Lee and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, Andreas.
The success of the company's initial public stock offering is expected next year, hinges, in particular the ability of Facebook, to go beyond bread and butter of text ads that appear in the pages of members of the house and become a key player in the graphical display ads and corporate brand marketing campaigns said Rebecca Lieb, advertising media analyst group Altimeter.
To meet the growing expectations, Facebook has increased its annual income, currently estimated at approximately $ 4 billion, on double-digit percentage points in the coming years, Gluck says. The company strives to keep their options open, to do so. In this case it bumping into pressure from critics who worry that leaving the online privacy standards entirely in the hands of corporations may not be a bad idea.



Facebook is a storehouse of data


Facebook for the first time revealed details about how it compiles its data tracking treasure in a series of telephone and email interviews with USA TODAY Bejart, Noyes, and Schnitt, as well as technical manager Gregg Stefancik and corporate spokesperson Jaime Schopflin. That's what they revealed:
-Company compiles tracking data in different ways for members who have signed in and use their accounts for members who are logged-off and for non-members. Tracking process begins when you initially visit facebook.com page. If you want to subscribe to the new account, Facebook inserts of two different types of tracking cookies in your browser "cookies" and "browser cookies". If you do not want to become a member, and move on, you only get a browser cookie.
From now on, every time you visit the third-party Web page that Facebook Like button or other Facebook plug-in, plug-in works in conjunction with cookies to notify Facebook of the date, time, and the web address of the web page you clicked on. The unique characteristics of your computer and browser, such as your IP-address, screen resolution, operating system and browser versions are also recorded.
If you are logged on to Facebook your account and surf the web, your session cookie holds this posting. Extra session cookie records your name, email address, friends and all the data associated with your profile on Facebook. If you are logged-off, or if you are not a member, browser cookies conducts registration, it is further reports of a unique identifier for alphanumeric, but not personal information.
Bejart acknowledged that Facebook can find out where specific members go on the web, when they came out of the system by comparing the unique characteristics of computer and browser are registered as a session cookie and browser cookies.
Bejar also acknowledged that "technical similarity" in a cookie based tracking technology used by Facebook and the wider online industry advertising. "But we do not like advertising network, all of our leadership in the data, how we use it, and we were all out," said Bejart. "We have a very clear and transparent approach to how to do advertising that I am very proud."
Nevertheless, Facebook, social descriptions of its tracking system did not satisfy some critics - particularly the European governing confidentiality. Ilse Aigner, Germany's Minister for Consumer Protection, last month banned the Facebook plug-ins from government websites and advised private companies to do the same.
And Thilo Weichert, data protection commissioner in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, expressed concern about how the technology Facebook, can potentially be used to create extensive profiles of individual Internet users.
"Anyone who visits or uses the Facebook plug-in must be expected that he or she will be followed by a period of two years", Weichert said in a statement. "Such profiling violates German and European data protection law."
Adding fuel to these issues, Arnold Roosendaal, doctoral student at the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands, and Nick Cubrilovic, an independent Australian researcher, separately documented, as a web page containing the Facebook plug-in by tracking more extensive than Facebook publicly confessed.
Noyes said Germany did not understand how tracking technology of the company. And he accuses the "software bugs" to track indiscriminate found Roosendaal and Cubrilovic.
Nevertheless, the researcher says Roosendaal Facebook, tracking cookies retain the ability to track well, are not members and registered with the members, so. "They faced the same problem now several times and each time they call it a mistake. It really is not conducive to winning the trust."
Some corporate executives have become concerned about cyber security to get track data is transferred as a button, you can use this intelligence to steal intellectual property. They asked the firewall vendor Palo Alto Networks to identify and block traffic from Facebook tracking cookies, allowing its employees to continue to use other services Facebook.
"The idea is that Facebook has a rich personal information that Google does not have," says Nir Beetle, founder and CTO of Palo Alto Networks. "The combination of that personal information from Web browsing patterns can be a revelation."


The basic rules are needed


Companies implement data tracking in the new business model "does not necessarily evaluate the long-term effects and the collective," says Craig Spiezle, executive director of the nonprofit Internet Alliance Trust.
Last week, the consumer reporter Ric Romero station KABC in Los Angeles showed how the insurance companies to monitor Facebook and Twitter, looking for reasons raise premiums and deny claims. Earlier, ABC News reporter Lyneka Little reported on how employers use Facebook information as part of the recruitment process.
Meanwhile, researchers at AT & T Labs and Worcester Polytechnic Institute as recorded tracking data from the internet search and browsing can be linked to personal information that Internet users reveal sites for shopping, travel, health or work. Personal information disclosure in social networks, as well as preference data collected from new applications for smartphones and tablet PCs are now being tossed into the mix, too.
Privacy advocates fear that in the near future, corporations, government agencies and political parties may take in tracking data from aggregators.
"Tracking data can be used to determine your political bent, religion, sexual preference, health, or what you are looking for a new job," said Peter Eckersley, director of technology projects Electronic Frontier Foundation,. "There are all kinds of ways to form wrong judgments about people."
So far, it does not appear that this kind of correlation data is being done, at least on a large scale. But in the absence of basic rules, technologists, regulators and privacy advocates fear that the companies involved in data collection tracking systems may be tempted to make money in.
Says Michael Fertik, founder and CEO of Reputation.com: "We can only assume that the advertising company with a rich treasure of data will be selling more and more of that data."

Share this article :

Posting Komentar

 
Support : Venus Net | Pagak City
Copyright © 2013. milf ridding hard - All Rights Reserved
Template Created by Together Published by Venus Net
Proudly powered by Blogger