Comments on: The Thing About Facebook’s FriendFeed Acquisition http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2009/08/12/the-thing-about-facebooks-friendfeed-acquisition/ Where Ideas For Online News Bounce Around Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:26:07 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Alison Rowland http://www.chryswu.com/blog/2009/08/12/the-thing-about-facebooks-friendfeed-acquisition/comment-page-1/#comment-263 Alison Rowland Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:45:18 +0000 http://www.chryswu.com/blog/?p=747#comment-263 I'm not sure you're correct about the cookies being used to glean more data about users. Cookies can only be detected or read by the issuing website. The only exception to that is third-party cookies (usually from advertisers), which are placed via remote loading of content (such as a banner ad), and which that third party could use to track which of the participating websites you visited. Facebook and FriendFeed still can't access that data unless it's supplied to them by some third party with whom they have a relationship. In addition, acceptance of third-party cookies can be turned off in your browser, and it is off by default in Safari. See the link below for more info. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/16/AR2005071600111.html If I'm off-base on this, I'd be interested to understand more about how the interplay of the sites and third-party cookies could work to increase spying on users.<p class="top-comments">Current score: <span class="top-comments-karma" id="karma-263">0</span> <small>(to vote for this comment, please visit the site)</small></p> I’m not sure you’re correct about the cookies being used to glean more data about users. Cookies can only be detected or read by the issuing website. The only exception to that is third-party cookies (usually from advertisers), which are placed via remote loading of content (such as a banner ad), and which that third party could use to track which of the participating websites you visited. Facebook and FriendFeed still can’t access that data unless it’s supplied to them by some third party with whom they have a relationship.

In addition, acceptance of third-party cookies can be turned off in your browser, and it is off by default in Safari. See the link below for more info.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/16/AR2005071600111.html

If I’m off-base on this, I’d be interested to understand more about how the interplay of the sites and third-party cookies could work to increase spying on users.

Current score: 0 (to vote for this comment, please visit the site)

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