Facebook Tracking

I do not have a Facebook account, but I do access Facebook pages.

I have no interest in creating a Facebook account. I don't care how popular it is. I never saw Titanic and still managed to eke out a meaningful existence. I'll survive without being on Facebook.

However, even without being on Facebook, meaning having an account, I'm still being tracked by just visiting others' pages.

From USA Today, the privacy debate over Facebook tracking its users:

In recent weeks, Facebook has been wrangling with the Federal Trade Commission over whether the social media website is violating users' privacy by making public too much of their personal information.

Far more quietly, another debate is brewing over a different side of online privacy: what Facebook is learning about those who visit its website.

Facebook officials are now acknowledging that the social media giant has been able to create a running log of the web pages that each of its 800 million or so members has visited during the previous 90 days. Facebook also keeps close track of where millions more non-members of the social network go on the Web, after they visit a Facebook web page for any reason.

To do this, the company relies on tracking cookie technologies similar to the controversial systems used by Google, Adobe, Microsoft, Yahoo and others in the online advertising industry, says Arturo Bejar, Facebook's engineering director.

Facebook's efforts to track the browsing habits of visitors to its site have made the company a player in the "Do Not Track" debate, which focuses on whether consumers should be able to prevent websites from tracking the consumers' online activity.

There's a difference between knowingly agreeing to hand over personal information and having it taken. If you sign up with Facebook, you agree to its rules regarding your personally identifying information.

Currently, Facebook is taking it without permission.

I have a problem with that.

...If privacy advocates get their way, consumers soon could be empowered to stop or limit tech companies and ad networks from tracking them wherever they go online. But the online advertising industry has dug in its heels, trying to retain the current self-regulatory system.

Online tracking involves technologies that tech companies and ad networks have used for more than a decade to help advertisers deliver more relevant ads to each viewer. Until now, Facebook, which makes most of its profits from advertising, has been ambiguous in public statements about the extent to which it collects tracking data.

It contends that it does not belong in the same camp as Google, Microsoft and the rest of the online ad industry's major players. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made this point to interviewer Charlie Rose on national TV last week.

For the past several weeks, Zuckerberg and other Facebook officials have sought to distinguish how Facebook and others use tracking data. Facebook uses such data only to boost security and improve how "Like" buttons and similar Facebook plug-ins perform, Bejar told USA TODAY. Plug-ins are the ubiquitous web applications that enable you to tap into Facebook services from millions of third-party web pages.

You can take steps to limit the tracking, like deleting cookies.

But let's face it, it's a losing battle.

If you're on the Internet, you're being followed even if you have no Twitter followers and Facebook friends.

Every cyber-step you take leaves tracks.

I think it's time to redefine privacy. Right now, it's an outdated concept.