The Facebook “Spy”-Button

One third of all websites have included social-widgets. These buttons notify Facebook, Google or Twitter, when a person has visited a website even if the person has not clicked on the button.

As the Wallstreet Journal reports, social widgets are implemented in one third of the top 1000 most popular websites (guilty!) and inform the Network (Facbook, Twitter, Google) when a user has visited the website even if the person has not clicked on the widget. These widgets, which are created to share information with friends, family and help websites attract visitors, link a persons internet usage to a certain social media profile (such as in LinkedIn, Facebook).

If a person logs in to his profile, a cookie is activated, to track a persons web-usage. A person only has to log into his profile once a month for the cookie to work. Data is collected while the cookie is valid; only by explicitly login out of Facebook or Twitter data will not be further tracked.

The Wallstree Journal investigated and found that:  ”Facebook, Twitter, Google and other widget-makers say they don’t use browsing data generated by the widgets to track users; Facebook says it only uses the data for advertising purposes when a user clicks on a widget to share content with friends.”

The concern on online-privacy is growing constantly. Peter Eckersley, a senior technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy-advocacy group puts it this way: ”Our reading habits online encompass everything we’re thinking about, political and religious views, health and relationship problems.”

So what do you think? Are you concerned?