Newsflash: Facebook doesn’t like privacy

Posted by CyberGhost VPN - Daniel Ionica in Common

Maybe you don’t know, but when you visit a website, that has Facebook widgets, even the Like button, Facebook already harvest information about you. No, you don’t have to click or to interact with the widget … it’s enough to visit a page with such an implementation and Facebook “see’s” you.

So what did heise.de do to prevent Facebook from collecting information about their users? They implemented a script, called Facebook 2-Klick-Button, which requires a user, who wishes to interact with Facebook, to click twice: once for activating the Facebook script and once for interacting with Facebook. All seemed good until Tina Kulow of Facebook Germany accused haise.de that their script violates Facebook’s Platform Policies, which states:

8th You must not use or make derivative use of Facebook icons, or use terms for Facebook features and functionality, if such use could confuse users into thinking that the reference is to Facebook features or functionality.

But how exactly the heise.de solution violates this Policies is not clear yet. What is clear, is that Facebook doesn’t like it and is asking websites, that made such an implementation, to remove it.
Later on Tina Kulow revealed Facebook’s reservations. In a tweet, she wrote: “To clarify: a 2-click button is not ideal – but not a problem. Only a Like button that merely visually pretends to be one is not OK. That’s all.” Since heise changed the design of the button for the first click that activates the Like function, there should now be no obstacles on Facebook’s part to further use of the 2-click button by heise online and other websites.

So what we at CyberGhost want to inform you guys about, is that we are planning to implement the heise.de solution as well.
PS: the title is ironic.