14 DAY TRIAL // A self proclaimed hacker, writer and entrepreneur called Nik Cubrilovic claims he has proof that Facebook is spying on its customers even after they've signed off from their accounts by using internet cookies.
After introducing the Timeline feature, the social network has been accused by many of invading their privacy and, if Cubrilovic is right, then it does a lot more than that.
He actually implies that after leaving a Facebook account, the cookies are not deleted, instead they're just modified, but continuing to keep track of what's going on.
Of course, this isn't some advanced tracking mechanism as only the websites that contain Facebook elements such as 'Like' will send any information back to them.
“Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit. The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions,” revealed Cubrilovic.
To prove his point, he compared the cookies from when he is logged in with the ones from when he is logged out, the comparison showing that the most important ones that identify the user remain intact.
“Facebook are only altering the state of the cookies instead of removing all of them when a user logs out. “
In reply to his post, Gregg Stefancik, who claims to be an engineer working for the multi-billion dollar website wrote “Thanks, again for raising these important issues. We haven’t done as good a job as we could have to explain our cookie practices. Your post presents a great opportunity for us to fix that. At the same time, your post reaches some incorrect conclusions that I hope to clarify. “
He states that “unlike other major Internet companies, we have no interest in tracking people,” instead the logged out cookies are used for “identifying and disabling spammers and phishers”, “helping people recover hacked accounts”, “powering account security features” and “identifying shared computers to discourage the use of 'Keep me logged in'”
In his reply, the engineer says that Cubrilovic misinterpreted some of the cookies' functions further claiming that everything they track is merely for security reasons.
I'm not going to argue which of them is right. I will only add the fact that I've Googled Gregg Stefancik and came across a LinkedIn account which belongs to someone with that name who claims to be a Facebook engineer from the San Francisco Bay Areea.
Check out the picture to see for yourself!