Logged off? Facebook still tracks you

You might think logging out of Facebook makes you safe from its prying eyes, but that's not so. Apparently, any time you visit a web page with a Facebook widget, your browser is still sending personally identifiable information back....

An Australian technologist has claimed that Facebook can track the web pages you visit, even when you are logged out of the social networking giant.

According to Wollongong-based Nik Cubrilovic, 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.

This simply means that any time you visit a web page with a Facebook button or widget, your browser is still sending personally identifiable information back to Facebook.

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

"The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions," he added.

Cubrilovic said he tried to contact Facebook to inform it of his discovery but did not get a reply, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

He said there were significant risks to the privacy of users, particularly those using public terminals to access Facebook.

"Facebook are front-and-centre in the new privacy debate just as Microsoft were with security issues a decade ago," Cubrilovic said.

"The question is what it will take for Facebook to address privacy issues and to give their users the tools required to manage their privacy and to implement clear policies - not pages and pages of confusing legal documentation, and ''logout'' not really meaning 'logout'," he added.