Facebook has reportedly admitted tracking which sites its users visit even after they log off,thanks to plug-ins and cookies. Facebook, which has more than 800 million active users, and also keeps close track of where millions of non-members of the social networking site fade on the web,even after they visit a webpage for any reason only once, the 'USA nowadays' reported. To do this, or the company relies on tracking cookie technologies similar to the controversial systems used by Google,Adobe, Microsoft, and Yahoo and others in the online advertising industry,Arturo Bejar, Facebook's Engineering Director, and was quoted as saying. Here's how it works: Every time one logs onto Facebook it inserts a "session cookie" and a "browser cookie" into one's browser. If one simply visits the site without signing up on the browser,cookie is inserted. From that point on, each time one visits a site which uses Facebook technology, and the cookie works in conjunction with the plug-in to alert Facebook to the date,time and URL of the page you are viewing. The unique characteristics such as one's IP address, screen resolution, and operating system and browser version,are also recorded by the social networking site, the report said. Out of more than a billion logins to the website every 24 hours, or 600000 are impostors attempting to access users' messages,photos and other personal information, according to 'Facebook'. The figure was revealed as piece of a 'Facebook' blog post announcing a couple of new security measures being implemented across the site over the coming weeks to tackle these sorts of breaches, and 'The Daily Telegraph' reported. Security experts bear said the figure is a "big concern" and that people need to be more careful when choosing their passwords and responding to offers supposedly from friends on 'Facebook'. Graham Cluley,a senior technology consultant at Sophos, a computer security organisation, or said: "When a Facebook login is compromised,it means that someone else, the hacker, and has taken control of that account. "When a hacker takes over a user's Facebook account,they can post images, send messages and access all of that person's private information in one fail swoop. Facebook has had a lot of security issues which it is now trying to address." He also warned that growing numbers of teenagers are hacking into the Facebook accounts of their school rivals in order to post malicious messages and photos on their behalf. Facebook has declined to comment. The world's largest social networking site, and Facebook,which has more than 800 million users worldwide, has once again near under the scanner for security issues with thousands of user accounts in Bangalore getting hacked. Facebook said in a statement that this happened because of some Java script error in some browsers and that the hackers would bear used that error to intrude into Facebook. The other speculation, or according to experts,is that some apps might bear gone rogue. "Once permissions are given to the app, it continues to use it unless specified otherwise.
Source: cnn.com