Canberra, Sept 26 (ANI): An Australian technologist has claimed that Facebook can track the web pages you visit, even when you are logged out of the social networking giant.
According to Wollongong-based Nik Cubrilovic, when the user is logged out of Facebook, rather than deleting its tracking cookies, the site merely modifies them, maintaining account information and other unique tokens that can be used to identify its users.
This simply means that any time you visit a web page with a Facebook button or widget, your browser is still sending personally identifiable information back to Facebook.
“Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit,” Cubrilovic wrote in a blog post.
“The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions,” he added.
Cubrilovic said he tried to contact Facebook to inform it of his discovery but did not get a reply, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
He said there were significant risks to the privacy of users, particularly those using public terminals to access Facebook.
“Facebook are front-and-centre in the new privacy debate just as Microsoft were with security issues a decade ago,” Cubrilovic said.
“The question is what it will take for Facebook to address privacy issues and to give their users the tools required to manage their privacy and to implement clear policies – not pages and pages of confusing legal documentation, and ‘logout’ not really meaning ‘logout’,” he added. (ANI)
Australian PM demands unity amid leadership cloud
June 15 (Reuters) – Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called on Tuesday for government unity as rumours swirled he could be dumped only months from elections due to his falling popularity and a controversial mining tax.
But Rudd is unlikely to be toppled — at least not yet — one senior figure from the ruling Labor Party said, and could expect a boost come election time from Australia’s robust economy even despite his woes over the planned mining tax.
Australia is in its 16th year of uninterrupted growth, avoided recession during the global crisis and its unemployment rate is half that of the Europe and the United States, all significant factors with many mortgage-conscious voters. [ID:nSGE6580KR]
Rudd stood his ground over the mining tax despite speculation his popular deputy Julia Gillard was set to replace him, even as opinion polls warned his government could become the first since 1932 to lose after just a single term in power.
“Reform is a hard business, it is a controversial business. The key thing in the the reform process is for governments to maintain their nerve,” Rudd told journalists as parliament resumed for possibly the final time ahead of a national vote.
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For a Factbox on Australian political risks, click:
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Labor Party stalwart Peter Beattie said the party would stick with Rudd regardless of the opinion polls. “The Labor Party is loyal to its leaders who have won an election,” Beattie wrote in The Australian newspaper on Monday.
Other commentators, however, warned Rudd’s “high-handed instransigence” would cost him his prime ministership. The Sydney Morning Herald said Rudd rivalled Pim Verbeek — coach of the national soccer team thrashed by Germany at the World Cup — as the most unpopular man in Australia.
Gillard has laughed off suggestions she should replace Rudd or could challenge, with the economy and employment still strong.
But with a likely October election looming, some Labor politicians believe she would offer a more conciliatory face and lure back jaded voters as conservative rivals and the minority party Greens close in, threatening a hung parliament or worse.
COMMUNITY, BUSINESS ANTAGONISM
Whatever happens in the elections, Rudd’s leadership could now be terminal. Gillard seems poised to replace him if Labor loses unexpectedly, or early in a new term if Rudd wins with a reduced majority in the parliament.
“There is the momentum of Rudd’s remarkable ability to mobilise community and business antagonism towards his own prime ministership, a momentum that shows no sign of abating,” senior political commentator Jennifer Hewett wrote in The Australian.
A Newspoll last week showed the opposition conservatives with an election-winning 53 percent to 47 percent lead over the government, although Rudd is still well ahead of opposition leader Tony Abbott as preferred prime minister.
Labor backbench members, in power since 2007, are pressuring Rudd to end a damaging row with miners over the planned 40 percent tax on profits, dividing voters in politically vital resource states.
The tax, and a decision to shelve carbon trading until the end of 2012, has hurt Rudd. Opinion polls show roughly half of voters oppose it because of concerns it would jeopardise jobs and investment.
More than $20 billion of new resource investment in Australia has already been shelved by global miners due to the tax, legislation for which won’t be drawn up until after the election and which won’t come into effect until 2012.
The government is preparing a compromise on the tax, being fought by miners in a multi-million-dollar advertising campaign, but Rudd has warned he won’t be rushed on a deal for “generous” transition arrangements.
Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner was among a host of ministers who sought on Tuesday to play down leadership speculation, which began after a former Labor luminary, who now works for a mining firm, called for his dumping.
“One thing I can tell you is we’re not going to be spooked by idle gossip,” Tanner said.
Gary Gray, Labor’s parliamentary secretary for resource-rich western and northern Australia, said the mining tax issue had to be resolved by August to end uncertainty and bring political debate back to Labor’s strengths in health and education.
Tanner said the government was doing all it could in consultations with the mining industry but it was impossible to set a specific deadline. (Editing by Michael Perry and Paul Tait)