Facebook Linking - Why?

[leopardml2341]

Has anyone noticed this?

 

 

The little 'f' icon at the very bottom of every page you visit.

 

I have no Facebook account that bears any relationship with my RMweb login ID, yet if I click the "f' it shows my Facebook account and links RMweb to my otherwise anonymous FB identity.

 

Would someone from Warners Publishing/RMweb like to explain p!ease?

[Matt C]

If I click on it, it takes me to BRM's Facebook page. . . As I think its meant to ?  And yes I do have a separate facebook account 

 

Edit, actually it DOES take me to my facebook, but opens at The BRM facebook page.  I would Imagine its becouse you have facebook on whatever device you are using and if you cluck the facebook Icon it will open YOUR Facebook, at the BRM  page 

Edited October 17, 2019 by Mattc6911

[leopardml2341]

Agreed, but by doing so it must register a link between one's FB account and RMweb ID....

 

Data harvesting methinks?

 

Should this be declared somewhere in RMweb's terms of membership, if so where is it?

[Matt C]

But. . . You have a Facebook Account, you have an RMWeb account.. . You click on a facebook link, on a device that you open  Facebook on , whilst being logged in and browsing within your RMWeb account. .  Isn't it YOU doing the linking ?

[Steamport Southport]

Maybe log out of Facebook before clicking links?

 

I only use it occasionally for music related things, but that's how Facebook works. It's a way of directing advertising towards your wants. All social media works the same. That includes your email account. That's why they are usually free.

 

The relevant declaration will be in the Ts & Cs you signed for Facebook.

 

 

 

Jason

[Harlequin]

The Facebook button uses a simple link to a Facebook url that includes the url of the current rmweb page as a parameter for Facebook to build a post around. Facebook knows who you are and whether you are logged in through cookies it has placed on your machine.

Rmweb knows nothing about your Facebook account.

 

[leopardml2341]

9 hours ago, Mattc6911 said:

But. . . You have a Facebook Account, you have an RMWeb account.. . You click on a facebook link, on a device that you open  Facebook on , whilst being logged in and browsing within your RMWeb account. .  Isn't it YOU doing the linking ?

That's exactly the point, I wasn't at that time logged into Facebook, but it showed the page as though I was. Some investigation needed methinks, was hoping that a response from Warners/RMWeb would 'half -split' that task as I thought it more likely than getting anyone at Face(less)book to respond.....

Edited October 18, 2019 by leopardml2341

[leopardml2341]

Thanks Phil, I'll clear out cookies and see what happens; though that in itself is interesting because I generally use Duck Duck Go as a browser for FB and I thought it was supposed to auto delete cookies after leaving webpages.

Edited October 18, 2019 by leopardml2341

[ejstubbs]

48 minutes ago, leopardml2341 said:

That's exactly the point, I wasn't at that time logged into Facebook, but it showed the page as though I was.

 

I just tried this myself.  When I was logged in to Facebook, though not having Facebook open in any tab at the time, the link took me directly to the sharing page in Facebook.  Which is what I'd expect.  As stated above, on a desktop machine using a browser (I use Safari) Facebook uses cookies to remember your login state.  When I logged out of Facebook (actually logged out, not just closed all tabs) clicking on the link presented me with the Facebook login page.  Which is exactly as I would have expected.  There are still Facebook cookies on my machine but I am definitely 100% certainly logged out of my Facebook account.

 

Not having the Facebook app on my smartphone or tablet I can't comment on how that would function, but I would be quite surprised if it was significantly different in a browser.  Bear in mind, though, that apps can store the details of your accounts on a phone as part of the phone's operating system functionality - for example, my Android phone has eight accounts stored, including my Google one, and the Apple account details required to access my iCloud mail.  Those aren't cookies: you can't clear them out by clearing cookies on a browser, you have to go in to the 'accounts' function in the phone's settings to manage them.  They're an integral part of the way the phone tries to link your apps together as seamlessly as possible (because repeatedly having to re-enter login details is tiresome for many smartphone users), and in many cases if you delete them the corresponding app will just recreate them the next time you log in to it, on the assumption that the seamless experience is what you want.

 

1 hour ago, leopardml2341 said:

I generally use Duck Duck Go as a browser for FB and I thought it was supposed to auto delete cookies after leaving webpages.

 

Sounds like it's not doing what you thought.  Having a look at DDG's web pages, it seems to be remarkably difficult to understand what it actually does do, apart from being a search engine that doesn't store any search history.  Maybe it's me being overly skeptical but I'd have thought that an organisation pushing a tool that is supposed to improve your privacy would be a bit more open about how it goes about it...

 

DDG does go on about blocking "trackers".  In the absence of clearer information I'd assume that they mean tracking cookies - but cookies recording your login status aren't tracking cookies, they're functional cookies, same as the cookies that RMWeb uses to remember your login status when you click the "remember me" tickbox on the login page.  Facebook is notorious for having placed tracking cookies in the browsers of people who weren't Facebook users even when they weren't even looking at a Facebook page.  Those were used by Facebook to track where people went on the web even when they didn't have a Facebook account  - IIRC any site that had a Facebook logo on it would update the tracking data.  But that was* a very different, and much more underhand and potentially sinister piece of functionality to remembering whether or a not a registered user is logged in when they come to your web site.

 

* AFAIK they have been told not to do this any more, and they say they've stopped.  Then again, when Facebook acquired Whatsapp they promised not to combine data gathered from Whatsapp users with same users' data gather through Facebook - and then a short while later they were caught doing exactly that.  So they have a definite history of not doing what they promise.

[DIW]

Here's a 'Control' operation; I don't have a facebook account. Before looking at RMweb I had looked at the Facebook page for a local event to see whether it has been weathered off.

Now on RMweb, when I click the f icon it takes me to the Facebook page for BRM Magasine.

Accordingly it can be supposed that Facebook has not left a cookie on my laptop regarding the page I had visited less than 5 minutes earlier, and in the absence of said cookies on the machine the icon takes me the Facebook page for the RMweb owners.

Edited October 18, 2019 by DIW

[AY Mod]

31 minutes ago, DIW said:

and in the absence of said cookies on the machine the icon takes me the Facebook page for the RMweb owners

 

That's exactly what it does. If you are logged in to FB or have live cookies it will open your logged-in page.

 

We have no knowledge, or control, of anyone's FB.

[Ian J.]

I have no FB account, and block any FB cookies and javascript. If I click the f button I get taken to the BRM facebook page.

 

As an extra precaution (as I have stated oft times in other posts in the history of RMweb) I also clear out all browsing history after each session manually.

[leopardml2341]

Thanks everyone for your responses.

 

Now I'm back home, I've played about with this a bit and I can't recreate the conditions, when not logged into FB, I experienced the other night in Mallorca. Weird, but I've tried all combinations of logged in/out, cookies and cache cleared and history deleted and 'cleaned'. 

 

Thanks again, maybe it was just one of those oddities which may have stemmed from any number of things and life's too short to worry about it, especially since I can't recreate it.

[Guest JiLo]

If you have a Facebook account, say goodbye to any privacy!  No matter what they say.

[Ben Alder]

2 hours ago, Ian J. said:

I have no FB account, and block any FB cookies and javascript. If I click the f button I get taken to the BRM facebook page.

 

As an extra precaution (as I have stated oft times in other posts in the history of RMweb) I also clear out all browsing history after each session manually.

 

Kenton would be proud of you

[Ian J.]

9 hours ago, Ben Alder said:

 

Kenton would be proud of you

 

Kenton had JS switched off all the time, IIRC. I allow it through but in very limited conditions.

 

We have to remember that even though browsers are supposed to be sandboxed, and I think some even sandbox tabs, JS is basically custom written code that is running on your device that could come from anywhere, and if it can find a vulnerability, it will try to exploit it. Also, so much JS now calls out to second, third, fourth, etc. hand files that you can never be sure that some malicious code isn't going to get called (normally via corrupted advert code, as gets reported every so often in the I.T. news).

Edited October 19, 2019 by Ian J.