Disable Facebook Chat Seen Status - Chrome Extension | Hacker News Reader

Disable Facebook Chat Seen Status - Chrome Extension

chrome.google.com

53 pointsladino39 comments

extension is open source, it just blocks a simple connection to http://www.facebook.com/ajax/mercury/change_read_status.php

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OP: I'd advise you to be careful producing extensions which adjust facebook in any way. The author of one of the most popular facebook extensions had his account revoked as it's strictly against Facebook's ToS to adjust the page or experience in any way: http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2012/12/19/facebook-bans-crea...

extension is open source, it just blocks a simple connection to http://www.facebook.com/ajax/mercury/change_read_status.php

Unfortunately Facebook won't care about any of that in their determination over whether to try to punish the op.

are you from Facebook ;)

Thanks for this, I just added a rule to block that in my AdBlock on FF.

Just added this address to my AdBlock list.

The only thing left to find out is, when will they change this implementation... unexpectedly.

No need for a Chrome extension.

Just block the /ajax/mercury/mark_seen.php, change_read_status.php and /ajax/messaging/typ.php URL's via your firewall ruleset.

The utility of a kernel space firewall is not limited to Facebook privacy. It's very easy to stop mobile apps from "phoning home" using such a firewall. Could users find this desirable?

Maybe there's a market for a pre-configured firewall you can carry in your pocket? Think small PCB (say, RaspberryPi or something that could fit in an Altoids tin) as a headless wifi gateway/firewall for your branded, infinitely functional, graphical mobile device.

It might sit between the user's mobile device and the wifi access point and redirect certain IP addresses (e.g., those for www.facebook.com) to a proxy listening on localhost. The proxy can perform Layer 7 filtering.

tcpdump/ngrep running on the PCB could show the user what apps are phoning home. The user could then choose to add them to the firewall.

Internet service subscribers with modest technical know-how routinely configure and run wifi routers in their homes. Or someone does the config and setup for them. Running a similar "router" in your pocket is not unfathomable.

Does privacy have value?

Curious why it needs access to all your websites? I thought you can do wildcards in Chrome?

Edit: OK looked over the Chrome .crx file. Apparently it does the filtering internally inside the script instead of declaring it in the manifest (or wherever Chrome puts those settings now).

The creator tries to pass themselves off as Facebook as well—"By FB", which links to www.facebook.com. Very uncool.

i just reviewed the source code and it only blocks a simple connection to /ajax/messaging/typ.php, /ajax/mercury/mark_seen.php, and /ajax/mercury/change_read_status.php.

good catch to reduce permissions.

Oh, it probably will get an update where it can access anything after a lot of users have installed it.

Regarding Facebook Chat:

Does anyone know why I need to "Turn Off Chat" every time I login to Facebook. It is clearly designed to login automatically, Facebook doesn't respect the user's wishes to remain "offline". It keeps logging in, as if they think my FB web engagement is going to increase for being available to chat. As a result I use FB less. Anybody knows why FB is becoming so unusable?

I don't know why that is, but you can get around it by creating an empty list of friends and adding it to the 'Turn on chat for only some friends...' section of the advanced chat settings.

looks like a FB bug: http://www.facebook.com/help/326603310765065

That means u r signed in from some other place, like your Smartphone, or some IM client like Trillian etc, or u have Facebook Messenger installed on ur phone, due to which u r always online when u sign-in.

I thought about this, but I don't have any FB app on my mobile, nor use an IM client (except HipChat for work).

Probably just some NSA agent logged into your account.

Did u use a IM Client like IMO by any chance? Because with IMO, even if u remove it (while ur status was online from IMO client), u r still signed into Facebuk. I eventually had to download it again, sign-in, changed my status to offline. And since then, I haven't faced any issue.

It is disabled on mine and stays disabled. Do you have cookies enabled?

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14314213/no-thanks.jpg

"access your data on all websites" "access your tabs and browsing activity"

NO THANK YOU!

Yes that is how extensions work

It adds an http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/webRequest.html#event... handler that prevents requests to /ajax/messaging/typ.php, /ajax/mercury/mark_seen.php, and /ajax/mercury/change_read_status.php.

Copy-pasta from some YouTube ad block extension.

I wouldn't mind it if it actually worked as expected. I often go through the tabs including that of facebook and people think I read the messages but decided not to respond. I also really hate the blink (name) wrote a message on the tab name. Facebook should get its shit together.

I just realized that what I wrote sounds like it has been written by a particularly slow-witted toddler. What I was trying to say is that I found very distracting and annoying the whole "Johnny messaged you" blinking thing while I'm reading something. Isn't it obvious that if I wanted to read someone's messages I would be ON Facebook instead of reading another tab?

Is the purpose of the "seen" message to encourage people to keep a conversation going (that they would otherwise have abandoned) out of guilt? If someone knows that their friend knows that they have read their message, I think that they are more likely to respond so that they don't seem like a bad friend. I guess the goal would be to get people to stay on the site longer.

The purpose of seen is IMHO to make FB messaging more reliable than other service like text msgs or E-Mail.

Obviously there are many people that like to not give responses, including me sometimes. But I guess that shouldn't make you change that behaviour?

It's seems very rude and arrogant to the other party in the conversation.

On the other hand when the 'seen' thing wasn't happening the other party could at least think that you just haven't checked the message yet.

Curious what exactly includes the "seen" feature? If I have 30 tabs opened in my browser, facebook being one of them, does that mean every message would be marked as "seen" even though I haven't visited that tab for hours? How does it work on mobile? Do push notifications also count in the "seen" since I can see and read the message on the lock screen itself.

I believe it means it would never get marked as seen to the user on the other end of the chat. That is, they would never know that you saw the chat text.

I assume it's interrupting or misleading whatever Facebook is using (focus? mouse movement?) to determine whether you've seen the text in the chat box.

Why? Does it matter whether or not people can see if you have read their message? I will answer your question when I have time, and if you're on my friends list I guess you should know me well enough to know that.

Facebook should implement a setting where you can disable this feature, so others cannot see if you have read their message, but at the same time this info is hidden for you as well.

yes, unfortunately the don't care and force you to always reply asap, when you have read the message. otherwise it would be nicebook or fairbook ;)

Why? What does it really matter?

Nice, gonna try it now. I hate that damn thing, and was dismayed when I couldn't disable it in Facebook's settings. Now if only I could do the same for the app.

Much more annoying feature is the sidebar, where all my contacts can see my real time activity. Damn I don't like it at all.