A fortnight on from Facebook’s announcement that is will sell targeted ads based on its user’s external web browsing habits, popular browser extension Adblock Plus is offering a special block list that prevents Facebook and 6,700 other sites from tracking a user’s behaviour.
Facebook is now using hidden tracking pixels in its ‘Like’ button to track users everywhere across the web –including outside of Facebook pages – in order to re-target ads.
The new tracking method ignores users’ Do Not Track preference settings (the browser setting where users can choose “ask websites to not track me”), and can track users’ browsing and activities after they have logged out of Facebook.
“If you do not want Facebook peering into your browsing habits, just enable the social media tracking blocker in Adblock Plus,” the company wrote in a blog post.
Facebook also offers a set of instructions for how to opt out of its new tracking platform, but as the AdBlock Plus team points out, Facebook’s opt-out system relies on cookies, “which means: you’d have to apply it to every browser on every device you own; it may expire when you least expect it; and if you clear out your cookies you have to reapply.”
The Adblock Plus blocking list, which provides the backbone of the feature, now thwarts 6,786 different trackers, an increase of around 70 percent from a year ago.
“Do people really want Facebook to know what medical supplies they’re shopping for, what online services they like or that they enjoy reading, say, self-help articles?” asked Till Faida, co-founder of Adblock Plus. “Many of them may not. So while tracking can be useful if done correctly, users need a way to say ‘no.’ That is why we offer an easy, permanent solution.”
Other companies’ tracking efforts blocked by Adblock’s browser extension include Twitter, Google, LinkedIn and Pinterest.