Privacy: Block Facebook Tracking

In the short amount of time that Facebook has been with us, it has already become the darling of many. With millions of people admitting that Facebook is the first thing they check as soon as they get up in the morning, Facebook has become an indispensible part of the lives of millions of people around the world. Most of its popularity is down to the fact that it is completely free.

But the question remains, how can such a big company not charge for its services? Where does it generate its revenue from? The answer can be found on those ‘like’ buttons you see on nearly every page you visit.

According to Facebook, the main purpose of the ‘like’ button is to share the webpage with all your friends. While this is its primary function, many people accuse it of having the same role as that of a spyware. They say that the ‘like’ button is used to keep track of all the websites that are visited by a user. This is then sold to companies which then create targeted advertisements for that user.

Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox users can prevent Facebook from sending back the data by using the Adblock Plus extension available to them. Adblock Plus is meant to block all advertisements from a website but one can configure its filters to block not just the Facebook ‘like’ button, but also the other social networking widgets. Installing the extension onto the two browsers is a piece of cake.

Installing Adblock Plus

The Adblock Plus can be installed from the Google Webstore, if you are a Chrome user, or from the Mozilla Addons page, if you are a Mozilla Firefox user.

Configuration for Mozilla Firefox

After the installation is complete, press control+shift+E, this will open the Adblock plus preferences window on which you will have to click on ‘filter’ and then select ‘add filter subscription’. From the drop down menu on the new window select ‘add a different subscription’. Type in anything in the ‘subscription title’ field and in the filter list location paste, ‘http://www.squirrelconspiracy.net/abp/facebook-privacy-list.txt.’  without the inverted commas and then click ‘add subscription’.

Configuration for Chrome

After you install Adblock plus, right click on the ABP symbol on the address bar and select ‘options’. In the new window, under the ‘filter lists’ tab, there will be an empty field for ‘Subscribe to a Firefox Adblock Plus filter list:’ paste, ‘http://www.squirrelconspiracy.net/abp/facebook-privacy-list.txt’  without the inverted commas and then click on ‘Add URL’