Facebook Security Issues

Facebook is a broadly used and well known community site and I know that a lot of you people outside are using it. I am also a user and therefore I have some suggestions for you to make it more secure.

Lately Facebook made some bad news with tracking the surfing behavior of its users, even when you are not on Facebook.
Nate Weiner made a very nice blog entry, which describes the whole issue in detail. If your are interested in reading it, you will find this blog entry here.

To secure yourself it is not necessary to read the whole article, because I will give you a shortcut what to do right now.

1. First of all, to use this security tools, you have to use Firefox, because the following tool is a plug-in for it.
2. Install the BlockSite add-on / plugin
3. After restarting Firefox, which is necessary to activate it
4. Open the options of the add-on, you can find it in the list of add-ons
5. There you enter this URL to block: http://www.facebook.com/beacon/*
6. Confirm it with ok and be safe

For those people who are not so familiar with Security and FireFox plug-ins, I also would recommend you the following plug-ins, which I'm using and also suggested by the Network Security Blogwriter Martin McKeay:

• NoScript
• which is very good, it protects you from any kind of scripts and ads. It blocks them in default, and you can temporarily or permanent allow sites and scripts. Very useful!
• GreaseMonkey
• is for using user scripts, I would suggest it only for advanced users. It is used to activate some userscripts, for more information you should read the description. As I said, maybe better for advanced users.
  
• CustomizeGoogle
• also suggested by McKeay, and honestly I didn't know it before, but will also use it, sounds very nice.

I'm using some more add-ons, but they are not all just for security.
Use Firefox and use the add-ons from above and you will be much more safer !!