Tuesday, May 03, 2011
“No matter where you go, there MyFaceSpaceBook is”
With the MyFaceSpaceBook “Like” button appearing all over the web, I realized that the intent wasn't just to indicate that I liked a page, but to track my web browsing habits. And it didn't matter if I was logged in or not, because any reference to MyFaceSpaceBook involved browser cookies and the sites I viewed when logged out of MyFaceSpaceBook could be reconciled with me when I logged back in.
So I started deleting any cookies dealing anything with MySpaceFaceBook before logging into the site, and again deleting them after logging out and closing the tab (that last step was important because I found out that MySpaceFaceBook captured the “tab-close” event and set a cookie).
It suddenly struck me the other day though, that I have a static IP address and that it doesn't matter if I delete the cookies or not, because MySpaceFaceBook could still reconcile any cookies sent to my IP address since it never changes.
Sigh.
No, not only do they know I visit Cracked (I never did care for Cracked the magazine, preferring Mad the magazine, but Cracked the website is miles ahead of Mad the website) but also Justin Bieber (not to be confused with Justin Beaver).
Um … that last site … with Justin Bieber … that's just to throw the MySpaceFaceBook tracking off.
No, really!
Ahem.
Anyway …
So, what's the point in trying to scrub cookies with MyFaceSpaceBook had me pretty much pegged by my IP anyway? Even if I didn't have a static IP address, it still wouldn't be that much of a shield, given that The Monopolistic Phone Company™ probably uses a small pool of addresses for my area anyway, and what with IP address geolocation, that would still give marketers valuable demographic information about my web viewing habits.
