Tuesday 27 September 2011

Facebook vows privacy fix 'in 24 hours'

Security consultant and blogger Nik Cubrilovic this afternoon told The Australian that Facebook had promised to revise its browser cookies so that they no longer collect identifiable information after a user had logged out.
Mr Cubrilovic said engineers at the social networking giant had made the commitment to him during a 40-minute conference call that ended early this afternoon.
He has spoken with US-based engineers and communication staff at Facebook during the call.
Mr Cubrilovic sparked a major privacy debate after posting a blog late on Sunday which demonstrated that Facebook was still collecting identifiable information about users after they had logged out from the social network.
Browser cookies are small computer files that can collect information about a user as they browse the internet. Information from cookies can be transmitted to remote servers for analysis.
This afternoon, Mr Cubrilovic posted a table which further details the personal information Facebook was collecting after logging out.
The information includes a Facebook user ID, which makes it possible for the social network to personally label computer usage information that it collects from PCs.
"They're sending the information to their servers, even when they (users)are logged out.
"It's a question of what they do with it. They may not do with it now, but in two years' time, they might introduce a new feature that accesses it."
Mr Cubrilovic confirmed that, instead of deleting or deactivating browser cookies at logout, Facebook instead extended the life of cookies stored on a computer for several years into the future.
He said Facebook also had promised to address three other cookie-related issues during the call.
"They aim to fix it (the logout issue) by tomorrow," Mr Cubrilovic said.
"There will still be cookies, but they won't be identifiable. That's within 24 hours.
"We can only take them at their word."
Chris Griffith @'The Australian'
Shouldn't have happened in the first place though...

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