Facebook Tracking People Who Have Opted Out of Tracking

Facebook specifically and individually tracks all people, even those who aren’t FB users. Using the opt-out mechanism you’re even worse off, since setting the opt-out cookie makes you uniquely identifiable (again).

During the opt-out process, Facebook sets a long-term identifying cookie and then uses this to track visits to pages that have a Facebook social widget. In other words: “for those individuals who are not being tracked by Facebook (e.g. non-users who have never visited a page on the facebook.com domain, or Facebook users who clear their cookies after logging out from Facebook), using the ‘opt out’ mechanism proposed for the EU actually enables tracking by Facebook” (emphasis in original).

When you opt-out …

[…] Facebook promises to stop collecting browsing information, or use it only specifically for the purpose of showing advertisements.”

So, of what use is it then?!?

Introspective and Intellectually Cautious

Hilarious quote comparing medieval Europe to Al-Andalus:

(talking about how Muslim scholars studied ancient Greek philosophy and the medieval Christian’s suspicion towards pagan texts)

“Set against this vibrant Islamic culture Europe can appear an introspective and intellectually cautious place.”

Muhahaha … “introspective and intellectually cautious” … this cracked me up 😀