14 DAY TRIAL // Nik Cubrilovic returns with another post where he details his conversations with Facebook engineers during the time and after the cookie issue was handled. It seems as they'll still exist and they'll still track, just not as before.
In the past days the news of Facebook tracking its customers has really stirred things up making internauts all over the world second guess the infamous social networking website.
While initially they claimed that no tracking was done, company representatives made the announcement that the problem will be dealt with in 24 hours.
According to Cubrilovic, the most controversial variable was a_user, which retained the user ID, but “As of today, this cookie is now destroyed on logout.”
Website representatives stated “What you see in your browser is largely typical, except a_user which is less common and should be cleared upon logout (it is set on some photo upload pages). There is a bug where a_user was not cleared on logout. We will be fixing that today.”
While a_xs, which was used to prevent cross-site request forgery, will also be deleted on logout, there are still some cookies that remain even after the profile has been left.
Zuckerberg's company claims that the remainder of elements that will be stored even after the session has ended will be utilized for things such as helping them identify suspicious login activity and protect members who access their accounts from public computers.
Even though some measures have been taken, “I would still recommend that users clear cookies or use a separate browser, though. I believe Facebook when they describe what these cookies are used for, but that is not a reason to be complacent on privacy issues and to take initiative in remaining safe,” concluded Cubrilovic.
Finally, as it turns out, Gregg Stefancik really is a Facebook engineer, being among those who've worked on the issue, as the blogger reveals.