tracking ip address activity facebook user

#Tracking ip address activity facebook user code#

And such requests can transmit data about the site you’re on, the browser you are using, and more. These requests typically go out to a wide swath of corporate servers-including Facebook-in addition to the website’s owner.

#Tracking ip address activity facebook user code#

“If those buttons are on the page, regardless of whether you touch them or not, Facebook is collecting data,” Oppenheim says.īehind the scenes, every web page contains little bits of code that request the pictures, videos, and text that browsers need to display each item on the page. Click on a Like button and you can see the number on the page’s counter increase by one click on a Share button and a box opens up to let you post a link to your Facebook account.īut that’s just what’s happening on the surface. Here’s how Facebook uses online tracking technology to gather information that can help the company generate advertising revenue, and what you can do to limit such data collection.Īs you travel through the web, you’re likely to encounter Facebook Like or Share buttons, which the company calls Social Plugins, on all sorts of pages, from news outlets to shopping sites. And the company outlines many of its practices in documentation for advertisers. Unfortunately, there are very few rules around how it tracks you.”įacebook representatives declined to discuss in detail how such data is collected and used but referred us to the company’s privacy policy. “What makes Facebook special is how wide its net is and how much it knows about you. “Facebook is like a lot of other ad companies that try to collect a lot of data about what you do online,” says Justin Brookman, privacy and technology director for Consumers Union, the advocacy division of Consumer Reports. Groups such as Consumer Reports are now calling for stronger consumer protections. The Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation into whether the company violated a 2011 consent order related to its privacy practices.ĬEO Mark Zuckerberg was called before Congress, and in his testimony this week he said that he would support some forms of regulation and that “everyone should have control over how their information is used.” Since then Facebook has raised that estimate to 87 million-while revealing that the profiles of nearly all 2 billion users may have been accessed by hackers taking advantage of the company’s liberal data-sharing policies.

While Facebook has used such techniques for years, the company’s practices have come under intense scrutiny since late March, when it was reported that data on about 50 million Facebook users was inappropriately acquired and used by Cambridge Analytica.