Facebook denies tracking offline users

Facebook has denied allegations that it tracks it users when they are logged out, saying it only uses tracking cookies to personalise content and to make the social networking site more secure.

Facebook has denied allegations that it tracks it users when they are logged out, saying it only uses tracking cookies to personalise content and to make the social networking site more secure.

An Australian technologist Nik Cubrilovic, recently claimed that when the user is logged out of Facebook, rather than deleting its tracking cookies, the site merely modifies them, maintaining account information and other unique tokens that can be used to identify its users.

"Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit," Cubrilovic wrote in a blog post.

But Facebook engineer Gregg Stefancik denied that the company tracked users in a comment on Cubrilovic's post, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Stefancik did admit that Facebook alters, but does not delete cookies when users log out. He said that Facebook does that as a safety measure, and does not use the cookies to track users or sell their personal information.

"Facebook does not track users across the web. Instead, we use cookies on social plug-ins to personalise content (e.g. show you what your friends liked), to help maintain and improve what we do (e.g. measure click-through rate), or for safety and security (e.g. keeping underage kids from trying to sign up with a different age)," Facebook said in a statement.