Re: Logging out from Facebook

Hello, 

This is something which I have been banging on about for a while now in the UK (and yes I understand how there is nothing groundbreaking here). This is something I brought to the attention of the BBC and the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK (http://www.nhs.uk). Both of which have taken my concerns onboard and have removed/re-implemented their "social widgets".

When i first came across this stuff I blogged about it on my personal website [1][2].

What was most interesting was that senior IT/internet professions I ended up talking to at NHS had no idea about the issues surrounding "not logged in and still able to track", and felt like they could hide behind their privacy policy which told users that they could "log out of facebook if they didn't want to be tracked" - this has since been updated. I was really sad to see that www.nhs.uk was so quick to implement the Facebook Like button without making an informed judgement about the implications on their users, given the sensitive nature of their pages - e.g. [3]. The NHS are still "working on improvements", but I feel that the developers/managers are simply not aware of the implications of adding the ever-so-trendy social features to their websites, and I wonder whether the social networking platforms need to be more transparent about the way their social widgets operate. 

Mischa *2 cents 

[1] http://mmt.me.uk/blog/2010/11/21/nhs-and-tracking/ 
[2] http://mmt.me.uk/blog/2010/07/30/the-facebook-like-button/  
[3] http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/depression/pages/depressionhome.aspx 

On 25 Sep 2011, at 11:24, Jeni Tennison wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Interesting read about how Facebook (and possibly other services) doesn't actually log you out (as in remove your identifying cookies) when you "log out".
> 
>  http://nikcub.appspot.com/logging-out-of-facebook-is-not-enough
> 
> Jeni
> -- 
> Jeni Tennison
> http://www.jenitennison.com
> 
>