Facebook and tracking browsing

Please let me know if this is the incorrect area in the form. Any comments welcomed. With regard to the recent announcements about facebook tracking browsing habits for advertising purposes; I am not particularly concerned about the advertising angle (I accept that facebook would want to make money from its service) but am very concerned about the ability to apparently track my browsing habits. I can potentially see this being used by unscrupulous governments to track dissent.
My questions are,
if you are logged out of facebook will it still track the sites you visit?
Would removing cookies each time you exit browser prevent tracking?
Would clearing the history when you exist prevent tracking?

 

1 = yes
2 = only to an extent
3 = no

To minimize tracking, since you can never stop some tracking altogether if you wish to visit websites. You must significantly alter your Internet surfing habits & your computer. Below are the basic steps needed to limit tracking & secure your anonymity.

- Use your "host file", update your host file with a precompiled host file (see link). Adblocking software & browser addons don't prevent the connections, they only block the display of ads in your browser window.

http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

Adblock itself uses a list but your computer has already made the initial connection with the adserver (data packets sent back & forth containing your IP address). This occurs before Adblock ever knows an adserver wants to display an ad from a specific adserver that's on it's list. Now the adserver has your IP address, if you go to another website containing ads from the same adserver company. It matches the IP address & is now tracking you even without the ad being displayed or the use of cookies (Google already does this).

Web browsers & software all run above the networking level after connections occur. The host file (a Windows system file) works at the networking level preventing your PC from ever making a connection to the ad server.

- Stop using auto login & site linking features that are now available on social networks. That means manually logging in each time you connect to sites like Facebook (you must clear your bowser after logging out). If you don't want them tracking you continuously that's one of the things you need to do.

- Set your web browser to clear cookies & cache, all session & local stored data upon close.

The following two steps further enhance your anonimity by further limiting tracking.

- Change your IP address regularly if it's dynamic, you don't want a static IP address unless running a server. The IP address is becoming a very important part of tracking you across the Internet, since your IP address is unique to you alone!

- Istall Zonealarm, it's the only firewall that by default blocks all applications on your PC from connecting to the Internet. Many of the programs you install on your PC today will connect to the Internet when you open the program, regardless of settings. Without Zonealarm or a program like Wireshark (network analyzer) you never know if or when these connections are occurring.

 

Thank you guys for excellent replies, and links! Had done a little research but had thought that the blocking advertising was probably going to only block advertisers that had agreed to it! Hadn't got to your links. Thank you for this wonderful site.