Is Facebook tracking you without lawful permission? The co-Chairs of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Caucus seem to think so. The concerned and chairing congressmen are Ed Markey, from Massachusetts and Joe Barton, from Texas — their political persuasions correspond to well-established national topoi of northern and southern states.
Jointly, they’ve signed and sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission requesting that an investigation be made into Facebook’s practice of “gathering information about the websites its users visited even after users logged out of Facebook.”
The Democrat and Republican made reference to Nik Cubrilovic with their “Australian technology blogger” shout-out and went on to say:
We believe that an investigation of Facebook tracking its users even after they log out falls within the FTC’s mandate as stipulated in Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act with respect to protecting Americans from “unfair and deceptive acts or practices.”
Subsequent to his calling foul, Nik Cubrilovic has accepted that Facebook has taken measures to mend the problem of tracking user activities after they’ve logged out. In his own words he’s said: “Over the course of the past 48 hours since that post was published we have researched the issue further and have been in constant contact with Facebook on working out solutions and clarifying behavior on the site.”
Read More:
http://markey.house.gov/docs/ftc_facebook_letter_09.28.11.pdf
http://nikcub.appspot.com/facebook-fixes-logout-issue-explains-cookies
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/09/ftc-facebook-cookies-log-out.html