# Stopping other sites from recognizing my Facebook identity? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 11, 2011, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-other-sites-from-recognizing-my-facebook-identity/585115 "2011-06-11T15:19:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-other-sites-from-recognizing-my-facebook-identity/585115/1 "2011-06-11T15:19:10Z")
I went to look up a movie on Fandango and I saw that it was all ready for me to insert a review that would be posted on Facebook – it had my Facebook profile picture and everything all ready to go. How do I prevent this from happening? I don’t like the idea of various sites I use to share their information about me. ---
**Author:** ![USCDiver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/uscdiver/32/354_2.png) [@USCDiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/USCDiver)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-other-sites-from-recognizing-my-facebook-identity/585115/2 "2011-06-11T15:22:03Z")
There was some section in the privacy settings on Facebook I noticed the other day that allowed for third party sharing of your information while you are signed in. I’m on my phone right now and can’t guide you there are more accurately. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-other-sites-from-recognizing-my-facebook-identity/585115/3 "2011-06-11T15:31:59Z")
Just taking a look, in the privacy settings, go to Apps and Websites (Edit your settings). Then there is a button that says “Public Search: Show a preview of your Facebook profile when people look for you using a search engine.” I assume that’s it. You can disable it from there. Also, interesting, I clicked on “edit settings” for “apps I use” and apparently I ‘authorized’ yelp to have full access to everything on my facebook page…idontthinkso…especially since I don’t use yelp, ever. Same goes for Rotten Tomatoes and most of the other things in there. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-other-sites-from-recognizing-my-facebook-identity/585115/4 "2011-06-11T15:58:09Z")
No, Joey, that’s for what people see when they look for you via google or bing. > [@https://www.facebook.com/privacy/explanation.php](#): > > Buttons and boxes containing Facebook content may appear on other websites to create more social experiences for you. The sites you’re visiting receive none of your information. The content in these social plugins comes directly from Facebook. If you click “Like” or make a comment using a social plugin, your activity will be published on Facebook and shown to your Facebook friends who see a plugin on the same site. The things you like may also appear on your profile (you can control this in Basic Directory Information). ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-other-sites-from-recognizing-my-facebook-identity/585115/5 "2011-06-11T16:02:50Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > No, Joey, that’s for what people see when they look for you via google or bing. Ahhh, I know exactly what the OP is talking about now, though I’ve never given it much thought. I have to admit when I have given it thought it always seemed kinda odd to me as I, like a lot of other people I think, have separate identities for separate websites. I’ve never used one of those boxes so I have no idea what happens when you post with it. I’ve always sort of wondered if it just puts a post right there on the website with your facebook photo and a link back to your page, if it puts the review on your facebook page as well (or a I just reviewed \_\_\_\_\_\_ at \_\_\_\_\_) or if when you start doing it you have to register or ok something or other. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-other-sites-from-recognizing-my-facebook-identity/585115/6 "2011-06-11T16:44:21Z")
The quote from Facebook above has the jist of the explanation. Essentially what happens is that the third party site (e.g. Fandango) simply includes a special link to Facebook on its site. This link causes a little bit of Facebook to appear on the rendered page. Since you probably recently used Facebook you still have the appropriate cookies in your browser, so this little bit of Facebook recognises you, and displays what you see. Fandango never sees this traffic. It is between Facebook and your browser only. On the other hand, what Facebook doesn’t tell you is that they now know that you visited Fandango. Like a lot of Facebook’s activity, it is the manner in which **they** accrete information about you that is both creepy and disingenuous. ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-other-sites-from-recognizing-my-facebook-identity/585115/7 "2011-06-11T21:06:13Z")
One simple fix is to use the ‘Log out’ item on the Account drop down found in the top right corner of the Facebook page. Of course, then you have to provide your credentials the next time you want to look at Facebook. ---
**Author:** ![crypto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b3f665/32.png) [@crypto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crypto)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-other-sites-from-recognizing-my-facebook-identity/585115/8 "2011-06-11T23:17:40Z")
Facebook is really becoming evil. If the government was running facebook, big brother theories would abound… but let some weirdo college dropout make it up, and not only is everyone willing to plunk down all sorts of personal information about themselves, but they made the kid a multi-billionaire in the process. Slight hijack, but why facebook and not myspace? What differentiated the two social sites to basically make facebook a part of the global web experience and a permanent part of our vocabulary, while myspace has been relegated to niche status? Was it a matter of luck, or did facebook make decisions that drove their business in a way that myspace refused to do? ---
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-other-sites-from-recognizing-my-facebook-identity/585115/9 "2011-06-12T02:20:18Z")
One safe way to proceed is to use Facebook in a browser completely separate from the one you use for browsing. For instance, open ONLY Facebook in Firefox, and visit all other sites using Chrome. (Not the other way around, though, because Facebook itself doesn’t work very well on Chrome.) Personally, my Windows 7 system has a virtual Windows XP running in a VMWare window, and I access Facebook using Firefox in XP. I can still browse the Web using my “real” Firefox in Windows 7. This way, even if I accidentally click the Like button on my favorite fetish forum for furry fairies, it won’t appear on my Facebook profile because my main browser doesn’t know about my Facebook identity. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-other-sites-from-recognizing-my-facebook-identity/585115/10 "2011-06-12T02:28:18Z")
It’s the names. Facebook was the first one to really push using your real name. ---
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-other-sites-from-recognizing-my-facebook-identity/585115/11 "2011-06-12T02:39:56Z")
> [@Stink Fish Pot](#): > > Slight hijack, but why facebook and not myspace? What differentiated the two social sites to basically make facebook a part of the global web experience and a permanent part of our vocabulary, while myspace has been relegated to niche status? Was it a matter of luck, or did facebook make decisions that drove their business in a way that myspace refused to do? I agree with the “real names” thing, it’s easy to get back in touch with people you used to know. Also, I think Facebook has always kept things uniform and classy (standard layout, nice white-and-blue colour scheme), which inspires confidence. My concept of MySpace is a bunch of complicated pages with background images that make the text unreadable. Oh, and background music. Maybe it’s just my perception. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-other-sites-from-recognizing-my-facebook-identity/585115/12 "2011-06-12T02:57:37Z")
> [@Heracles](#): > > I agree with the “real names” thing, it’s easy to get back in touch with people you used to know. > > Also, I think Facebook has always kept things uniform and classy (standard layout, nice white-and-blue colour scheme), which inspires confidence. > > My concept of MySpace is a bunch of complicated pages with background images that make the text unreadable. Oh, and background music. > > Maybe it’s just my perception. Its not your perception. I work on big databases for a living but not everyone understands what goes on behind the scenes. Myspace was a bad design in general and not really designed to be a general purpose social networking site. Facebook was a stroke of genius that hit at the right time. The real names feature is a huge deal for what it became. There is little guessing once you combine that with photos and other data like birthdates. Nobody had done that on a large scale before. Once you have that data in place, you can collect a baseline of other information about the specific person and then branch off into basically everything that. It is a marketing wet dream that is getting more spooky by the day. As to OP, you may be able to stop individual sites from sharing information about you so that other users won’t be able to see but that is still dependent on the user agreements. Social networking sites don’t exist for your convenience and Facebook already makes a profit off of everything they share about you. You can’t stop them from sharing information with each other in all ways however. You have to destroy your computer and and flee to the mountains if you want true privacy from this type of thing. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-other-sites-from-recognizing-my-facebook-identity/585115/13 "2011-06-12T06:56:06Z")
That’s silly. All you have to do is reveal as little information about yourself to Facebook as possible. And throw in a few lies for good measure. You can set them to be visible to “Only Me” if you are worried about your friends seeing it. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-other-sites-from-recognizing-my-facebook-identity/585115/14 "2011-06-12T13:14:55Z")
> [@Heracles](#): > > One safe way to proceed is to use Facebook in a browser completely separate from the one you use for browsing. For instance, open ONLY Facebook in Firefox, and visit all other sites using Chrome. (Not the other way around, though, because Facebook itself doesn’t work very well on Chrome.) This is what I do; I run Facebook (with fairly high privacy settings) in Firefox, and browse everything else in Pale Moon. ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stopping-other-sites-from-recognizing-my-facebook-identity/585115/15 "2011-06-12T16:08:52Z")
> [@Stink Fish Pot](#): > > Facebook is really becoming evil. _All your face are belong to us._