Facebook denies cookie tracking allegations
zdnet.com
zdnet.com
"the logged out cookies are used for safety and protection including: identifying spammers and phishers"
How would that work?
"detecting when somebody unauthorized is trying to access your account"
I can see how that would prevent anybody to log in from another system, but how would ey separate a user doing that from a villain?
"helping you get back into your account if you get hacked"
How would that work?
"disabling registration for a under-age users who try to re-register with a different birthdate"
How would that work while at the same time allowing shared computers (as cited below)?
"powering account security features such as 2nd factor login approvals and notification"
How would that work?
"and identifying shared computers to discourage the use of “keep me logged in.”"
That I can understand to be a feature, but why would it require more than a 'someone logged into Facebook from this account on this computer' flag? Certainly, it would not require storing a user ID?
But hey, finding malicious intent in anything Facebook does is cool these days, I guess.
An alternative way of phrasing it might be "applying some skepticism to Facebook's approach to privacy.
I don't think that such skepticism has anything to do with being "cool", I think it's warranted - Facebook's valuation is largely based on the value of teh data it holds and its ability to to track and analyse user behaviour.
The original article merely points out that logging out doesn't actually effect Facebook's ability to track & analyse, so why should we assume that it voluntarily throws away an important data collection opportunity?
For Facebook's larger investors, I've been wondering what kind of access or other benefit they (may) gain, beyond ROI.
Besides, being able to track and actively assign IDs - including for people who don't have accounts - is very different. For a bad car analogy, when one walks in a city we pass by plenty of cars that could hit us if they turned abruptly. But if the car is actually driving on the sidewalk in our direction, most people would be slightly more worried.