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Comment by tobr | Hacker News Reader

So how will this work if I don’t use a Facebook account?

That's my question as well, they aren't saying anything about shadow profiles. It seems like a ploy to get people to create accounts just to 'stop' tracking.

There’s a bunch of FB employees in the comments here, so I guess they will answer soon.

EDIT: Any moment now, I suppose it might take a while to type up a thorough, elucidating answer.

> I guess they will answer soon

You're way too optimistic.

If you read the article linked in the comments, it looks like this works by creating a special tracking ID for each user that can be disconnected from the real UID, if the user chooses to.

So if you don't have FB, presumably you already don't have UID, so you're on equal footing with Facebook users that use this future. They are tracked, but tracking data is not connected to their UIDs.

If you don't have a facebook account, facebook likely has a shadow profile for you. Which would carry your phone number, full name, and whatever else they could extract from your friends' phonebooks and whatever other sources they use. There is no opting out of that, and there is no opting out of facebook getting third party data that lets them connect your shadow profile to a cookie, or to information collected by third parties.

Yeah, but it's not connected to your UID, so it's okay!

From what I understand, it will actually create a shadow profile not linked to your real profile, instead of actually not tracking you. (I have the french version, which basically says : 'you can disconnect tracking informations from your actual account if you desire')

So there's no change for people not using facebook, you'll be tracked like before no matter what.

I never knew about those, they are super creepy :/

I've just blocked all Facebook.com cookies in my browser. If you're not using Facebook, why do you ever need its cookies?

It looks like they rotate the ID for third party data every 24 hours, but only if you opt out.

Presumably, their tracking is more effective if you simply don’t create an account (so they never rotate the ID).

/Insert a rant about perverse incentives and dark patterns here

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