Recently it came to our attention that Facebook has been using tracking cookies that, well, track your web activity (it has been known for some time that FB has AD tracking). Any site that has a "like" icon for Facebook sharing will create a cookie in your browser and track that activity whether or not you have a Facebook account. It is no secret that cookies are created by first and third party websites in your browser. The difference is that the Facebook Beacon Ad system will keep an eye on your surfing whether you are logged in to Facebook or not. An article at the NYTimes states, "Cookies are used to store information about a user or computer’s Web use so sites can customize that user’s experience, including what ads they see. So-called persistent or tracking cookies are data placed not by the site visited, but by other third-party Web sites that have placed content or advertising on the visited Web page. These types of cookies can stay on computers for long periods of time and gather data about surfing habits, and have long raised hackles among those concerned about privacy online." Browsers have fought the cookie war for some time. In fact you can even disable cookies on your browser, but this may effect your surfing experience causing some websites to not work properly.
This is where Disconnect comes in. Disconnect allows users to browse with some privacy again. There is one caveat, it is only supported in Chrome or Rockmelt at this time. An excerpt from the Chrome Extensions page states;
Disable tracking by third parties like Digg, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Yahoo, without requiring any setup or significantly degrading the usability of the web.
• Truly depersonalize searches on search engines like Google and Yahoo (by bl
ocking identifying cookies not just changing the appearance of results pages), while staying logged into other services — e.g., so you can search anonymously on Google and access iGoogle at once.
• See how many resource and cookie requests are blocked, in real time.
• Easily unblock services, by clicking the toolbar button then services (and reloading current pages) — e.g., so you can play games on Facebook.
So, if you use Chrome or Rockmelt give this extension a whirl. I have i installed and
it works like a charm. Follow the link to the Chrome Extension on page and click Install. After Disconnect has been installed you can see it working by clicking the Disconnect icon on the upper right tool bar in Chrome. A list of blocked cookies per website will pop up, to disable the filtering of one site or another just click the name in the list. Click the name of the unblocked site again to resume filtering.
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