![]() What they are interested in is marketing to groups of individuals. For the most part, they’re not interested in individuals. It seems possible that with enough data and enough analysis, enough information could be correlated such that it could be used to identify you, specifically. Depending on how they analyze the data, they can figure out what topics you’re likely interested in, what views you likely hold, and even what things you’re likely looking to purchase. Eventually, Facebook can build up quite a picture of exactly what sites you visit and what pages you view on those sites. Facebook might know you visited page A on site Z, and perhaps even know your country by virtue of your IP address, but that’s nowhere near enough to identify you.Įventually, though, Facebook sees you’ve visited pages B, C, and D on site Y, pages E and F on site X, and so on and so on. Seems pretty random and pretty anonymous, right?Īt first, it is. ![]() If you’re not signed in to Facebook, though, you’re just “user: 12,398,641,238”. Put another way, “user: 12,398,641,238” could very well identify you, specifically, by identifying your specific Facebook account. If you’re signed in to Facebook, it’s very likely that whatever is stored in the cookie is associated with your account. It depends on what “user: 12,398,641,238” really means, and how much data has been collected already. All the pages on those sites you visit.īut is it really you that’s being tracked?.By the way, here’s the data you asked me to keep: “user: 12,398,641,238”.Now, the next time you visit any site that happens to use the Facebook pixel, your browser will request: Here’s your pixel.png, and here’s a little bit of data I want you to keep for me: “user: 12,398,641,238”.If you’ve never visited Facebook before (or you’ve just cleared cookies), the request is still: In Ask Leo!’s case, for example, this cookie might include the fact you’re signed in to your Ask Leo! account and don’t need to sign in again every time you move from page to page.Ĭookies apply to images as well - including the Facebook pixel. I’m just using a random number as an example - it could be any data. By the way, here’s the data you asked me to keep last time: 1,860,012,375.Hey ! Could I get “best-articles-collection” from you, please?.The next time you visit any page on that site, the request looks like: Sure, here’s the page, and here’s a little bit of data I want you to keep for me: 1,860,012,375.CookiesĬookies are nothing more than bits of data placed on your computer by websites that are included in subsequent requests when you visit any page on that website again. That’s still not tracking, though it’s just notification. Let’s visit again.įacebook learned a couple of things from this exchange. Then, when the browser discovers that the page includes a reference to the image: It’s called the “ referrer“, or referring page.įor example, for the image at the top of this page, the request is more like: Whenever a browser requests an image to be displayed on a webpage, it includes the URL of the webpage containing the request. So, how does one silly little pixel let Facebook track you? Referrers ![]()
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