Chrome extension that blocks ALL request made to the main Facebook domain and its subdomains.
A while ago, I decided to delete my Facebook account because of the way Facebook is getting used nowadays. In my opinion it wasn't much more than a data feed of complete utter bullshit. Fake happy messages and shit. So I was happy when facebook gave me the message that my account was 'deleted'. The first thing I went to do after this lovely message, was to check my cookies, cache and local storage for anything related to Facebook. To my surprise (not) there were still cookies left. A cookie named datr with a unique identifier. Oh wow, Facebook is still tracking me, such a lovely way to end a relationship between a company and its clients.
I wanted to get rid of this cookie by using a service recommended by Facebook: http://www.youronlinechoices.eu. I was told this would stop companies like Facebook tracking me for "advertising purposes". So, I let this wonderful application scan my cookies. And yes, it told me that Facebook was tracking me. After which I was letting the application get rid of everything that Facebook uses to track me. And I received a message telling me that Facebook was no longer tracking me, what a nice tool! How surprising to find out that the datr cookie was still present. Actualy the application caused Facebook to refresh the datr cookie, so I'd be tracked for an even longer period. This was all not really that surprising to me, but what really did surprise me is the following. When I didn't even have any Facebook cookies set, and I ran the tool recommended by Facebook, I was told that I was not being tracked by Facebook. Thats right, I WAS not being tracked, until I used the tool. Another datr cookie was set. To sum that up:
- Case: already being tracked
- I wanted to get rid of Facebook tracking me
- I used a tool recommended by Facebook to opt-out of the tracking
- The tool told me that I was no longer being tracked whilst still being tracked
- Case: not being tracked
- I wanted to check whether I was being tracked by Facebook, knowing I was not being tracked
- I used a tool recommended by Facebook to find out if I was being tracked and if so, to opt-out of it
- The tool told me that I was not being tracked, after which I checked my cookies and found the
datrtracking cookie set by Facebook.
The datr cookie I mentioned was set to the domains .facebook.com and facebook.com/ which means it will be send along with every HTTP request to the main Facebook website, well that makes sense. But more concerning, it was also send along with every request made to a facebook.com subdomain. Well, I never visit a single Facebook page, neither do I browse to one of its subdomains, so I should be in the clear right? Well no.. the web is cluttered with Facebook social plugins, and each of them made requests to either facebook.com or one of its subdomains. Meaning, I was still being tracked by Facebook after all these steps:
- Request an account deletion
- Confirming the account deletion
- Clearing my cookkies
- Using a tool recommended by Facebook to opt-out of their tracking which was not saying anything about setting cookies or the possibility of cookies being set by trackers.
Well, just fuck Facebook, so here is fb-block!
- Clone or download source code.
- Browse to
chrome://extensions - Check the box
Developer modeshown at the top of thechrome://extensionspage. - Click load unpacked extensions and browse to the direcotry you cloned or downloaded fb-block in and select the fb-block directory.
Click the extension popup button (Facebook 'f' logo with a red cross) and click the button to toggle whether to block Facebook or not. This popup also shows how much requests to Facebook are blocked, in total and in the current browsing session.