Big Brother’s Watching: Facebook Admits to Tracking Users & Non-Users Offsite

Lately, Facebook has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. The company’s Achilles heel seems to be with regards to its respect of users’ data privacy. Just last month, revelations about Cambridge Analytica using information from more than 80 million Facebook users’ accounts shocked the world. The mined data was used in various electoral campaigns around the world, including Brexit and the 2016 U.S. election.

Today, the latest fiasco from Facebook with regards to its handling of users’ data comes after the CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, shared that the world’s largest social network constantly tracks people online. The shocker? The fact that all this still happens whether people have Facebook accounts, or not.

Given the sensitive nature of the matter, it’s almost unbelievable that one company can have all that power. Yet, that seems to be the case. That we’ve all become aware of these revelations perhaps portends the dangerous path we’ve been on.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal led to Zuckerberg receiving the summons for questioning from Congress

It is during the grilling sessions that Zuckerberg revealed how Facebook tracks the internet activities of people all around the world. Ben Luján, a U.S. Representative prompted Zuckerberg to shed light on how they collect user data.

Coming to Light

Unbelievably, the revelation that followed was that Facebook actively monitors what everyone does on the net. This admission was met by protests from both lawmakers and privacy advocates almost immediately. They were of the opinion that Facebook should seek to find a means for non-users to be aware what exactly the company knows about them.

Representative Lujan, a Democrat sounded off by saying that Facebook needs to change tact. It is unclear how such a change would affect Facebook’s ability to target ads. At present, Facebook has revealed that it has no plans to build such a tool. At least, not in the foreseeable future.

Chris Calabrese, vice president for policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington advocacy group criticized Facebook’s current methods of operation citing the fact that no one really knows what Facebook does with that kind of information.

Cookie Crumbs

Daniel Kahn Gillmore, a senior staff technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union believes Zuckerberg was either purposefully misunderstanding the questions posed to him or he was in the dark about Facebook’s operations

Cookies are essentially small files that get stored on browsers and utilized by Facebook and other internet companies to track user activity on the internet. By tracking user experience on the net, such companies are able to target specific users with particular ads.

The other way Facebook is able to obtain data from non-users is by relying on active users on its network. Once a Facebook user uploads email addresses of friends on their site, Facebook is able to actively monitor the activity of users allied to the shared email addresses.

In their defense, Facebook cited that while there could be concerns in terms of user privacy, they don’t believe they have acted in the wrong in any way. According to them, that’s fundamentally how the internet works.

When questioned if users could opt out of the cookie collection and the tracking system as a whole, Zuckerberg revealed that users could make utility of apps that delete cookies on a regular basis or by tweaking the browser settings. Making these changes would not only affect Facebook but other sites on the internet too since this is the very same code other sites use on the internet.

So, how exactly does Facebook install cookies on non-users browsers? Simple. One someone visits a page with a Facebook “like” and/or “share” button, the cookies get installed. Importantly, the user does not need to push the buttons for the cookies to take effect.

On their Case

The ACLU is pushing U.S. lawmakers to put in place privacy laws that will require consent before users give out data

While it’s true that Facebook is not the first company on the internet to use cookies to collect to track users, advocates and lawmakers mentioned they were getting hard on Facebook due to the sheer size of the company. In addition, the claim that Zuckerberg has not been upfront with regards to the extent of user tracking and why they did it.

Zuckerberg asserted that Facebook used cookies for security purposes. However, he failed to divulge other possible reasons why Facebook used the cookies. When Facebook representatives were quizzed about this, they could not divulge as to why Zuckerberg chose to mention security as the one only reason.