# How to stop Facebook from browser tracking you



## TechSocial

Many websites and this includes Facebook (Like) and Google Plus (+1) use buttons for recommending web pages on social networks. These social networks also monitor your browsing behaviour, even if you dont have an account and this is also happens even if you have third-party cookies disabled.

ShareMeNot is a an extension in Chrome and an add-on in Firefox that allows you to stop Google and Facebook as well as other social networks from tracking you online. By default ShareMeNot blocks, AddThis; Digg; Facebook; Google+; LinkedIn; Pinterest; StumbleUpon; and Twitter. Check out my post from January last year where I suggest you use ShareMeNot.

ShareMeNot will now completely replace the buttons with local stand-in buttons (text). This design allows ShareMeNot to avoid making any requests at all to the trackers until you click on one of the buttons. The old version made requests to trackers to load the buttons, while ShareMeNot removed cookies from those requests, they could still reveal information like your IP address. Here is how you use ShareMeNot in Chrome and Firefox:

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## hewee

ShareMeNot sounds somethink like Ghostery.
http://www.ghostery.com/

Firefox with NoScript and Adblock Plus and Ghostery along with a good hosts file will do a pretty good job of blocking things.

With NoScript a lot of things will not even load without the site having rights to load the script. Then once the siye gets rights you get more sites listed and so on.


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## AaLF

Guys I think you can solve my dilemma. My sister & I are heavy facebook users. For us Facebook is the new Forums and we use 'em as such. We have a PC each.

So we have several accounts each and those in the 'groups' are over a thousand in many cases. So to open a new account you gotta join back up with ya 'friends' with lots of people and FB sooner or later catches you making to many friends and disables you. Potential spammer is the accusation.

I tried Boleh VPN with a seperate ip for each account but to no avail. Blocked by the time i re-united with 100 friends. We're suffering from this new gestapo Facebook.

Some have said its something to do with the PC's own I.D. that they track. But now you say its to do with Firefox. I don't mean to sound too illiterate, but i am. So could someone just post up a step x step list of 1. do this, 2. then do this, to fix up my Firefox please.


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## Elvandil

AaLF said:


> Guys I think you can solve my dilemma. My sister & I are heavy facebook users. For us Facebook is the new Forums and we use 'em as such. We have a PC each.
> 
> So we have several accounts each and those in the 'groups' are over a thousand in many cases. So to open a new account you gotta join back up with ya 'friends' with lots of people and FB sooner or later catches you making to many friends and disables you. Potential spammer is the accusation.
> 
> I tried Boleh VPN with a seperate ip for each account but to no avail. Blocked by the time i re-united with 100 friends. We're suffering from this new gestapo Facebook.
> 
> Some have said its something to do with the PC's own I.D. that they track. But now you say its to do with Firefox. I don't mean to sound too illiterate, but i am. So could someone just post up a step x step list of 1. do this, 2. then do this, to fix up my Firefox please.


If you have a problem you would like solved, please start a thread about it. Tacking your own problem to someone else's thread is known as "hijacking" the thread. Even very similar problems are often very different, and trying to solve too many problems at one time only leads to confusion.


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## AaLF

ok thanks Elvandil


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## Ent

hewee said:


> ShareMeNot sounds somethink like Ghostery.
> http://www.ghostery.com/
> 
> Firefox with NoScript and Adblock Plus and Ghostery along with a good hosts file will do a pretty good job of blocking things.
> 
> With NoScript a lot of things will not even load without the site having rights to load the script. Then once the siye gets rights you get more sites listed and so on.


I was recently setting up a website for my Dad, and he insisted that it should have one of those facebook like buttons on it. I got the appropriate code from facebook, stuck it in, and nothing happened. I tried it in IE and it worked, but in firefox it just did not appear. I checked their codes, fixed the validation mistakes facebook made, moved it into different places on the page, read through every line of HTML and CSS before it dawned on me. 4 disabled add-ons later...
(It also didn't work in my virgin copy of Opera, but that was for a completely different reason.)


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## ScottMSanders

Yeah, using Do Not Track functions and developing web sites do not mix. I found this out the hard way too.


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## ScottMSanders

Also there's another great add-on, Do Not Track Plus by Abine, that can block not just sharing buttons but stats urchins too like Google Analytics, AddThis, etc.

You can also customize it per page or item if you want to still use some of them or in the rare case that it displays the webpage wrong.


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## lili5689

Privacy protection 101:

- Configure your browser to delete all cookies on shutdown.
- Don't use Flash Player
- Avoid Google, Facebook and Twitter


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## Ent

lili5689, I certainly agree with your first two points. 
I honestly don't think the third point is terribly useful though, for two reasons. Firstly Google, Facebook and Twitter have managed to slip their own code into a large proportion of the web. Any site that uses google adverts for example, or has a facebook like button... Add-ons like the one in the article can be useful, but it's not enough to just avoid those sites. Secondly, they're not the only sites that track people. If you took all your search engine "custom" to Yahoo or BING for example, you'd still be tracked: by Yahoo or Microsoft.


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## stampajo

I wish this info came out earlier but I got hit with Facebook tracker and than I was getting mail from friends and relatives who's address wasn't theirs. Plus, an email thru FB using UPS logo saying I have a package that needs to be delivered so click on this link to make sure the information was correct. Well, like an idiot I clicked than it was too late. It cost me $60 to rid FB virus but well worth it. Norton explain that once you click on the link...it's to late for any protection ware to save you, you have to carefully read your email before opening. So listen to what "Techguy.org" is saying and check with them for a solution first. A lesson I have learned the hard way.


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## Telegraph Sam

I have only just read the opening post and don't want to hijack the subsequent discussion with this: I work for a small engineering SME and for months we have been arguing over whether we can use social media in general and LinkedIn in particular to help our low profile marketing efforts. If you sign up to LinkedIn (I have) and then use it(I have only dabbled) it seems to want to take over your business and personal address books, which could be highly embarrassing. Is there a way, for example by using ShareMeNot, of using LinkedIn as a tool rather than as a master, or would this be regarded as not playing by the rules and defeating the object? All the soc med forums seem to assume that participants have no qualms about bearing all, which I regard as unrealistic. Appreciate hearing unbiased views and experiences of others in this scenario.


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## AaLF

If you are using firefox, you stop Facebook tracking with FaceBookBlocker Add-on


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## ekim68

I have to say that I've been playing with NoScript for a while, thanks Harry, and it's really easy to work with...I'm impressed..:up:


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## hewee

ekim68 said:


> I have to say that I've been playing with NoScript for a while, thanks Harry, and it's really easy to work with...I'm impressed..:up:


You're welcome.
Don't forget to export your setting and list from NoScript because the more sites you change things on takes time.
Then you can import the setting to other computers etc and save a lot of time and also know you have the same setting on each computer.


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## ekim68

hewee said:


> You're welcome.
> Don't forget to export your setting and list from NoScript because the more sites you change things on takes time.
> Then you can import the setting to other computers etc and save a lot of time and also know you have the same setting on each computer.


Right on, thanks again....:up:


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## hewee

ekim68 said:


> Right on, thanks again....:up:


You're welcome ekim68.

Check other add-ons for saving settings. Also the add-on folders like adblockplus has a folder of backups but also has the backup and restore in the program.


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