Facebook has finally admitted that it has been watching the web pages its 750 million members visit. The huge privacy breach was simply a mistake, it says. Software that automatically downloaded to users’ computers when they logged in to Facebook “inadvertently” sent information to the company, whether you were logged in or not.

At the beginning of this week, 2oceansVibe recounted how an Australian technologist, Nik Cubrilovic, had discovered that Facebook was tracking the websites its users visited even when they had logged out of the social networking site.

Many of the larger news agencies didn’t pick up on the story until later in the week, and one is left wondering whether Facebook hoped this would just go away, like they probably hoped Nik would, because they hadn’t been replying to his emails since last year when he first discovered the issue.

Of course Facebook is keen to know what you are up to all the time because this is valuable information to use when competing in the social media sphere.

Ovum analyst, Eden Zoller:

Facebook is a lot more than a social network and ultimately wants to be the premier platform on which people experience, organise and share digital entertainment.

It’s hard to quantify what the data would be worth when creating targeted advertising based on the sites users visit, but some believe it could be worth billions, especially since it’s been going on for months.

Although Facebook is satirically playing down the fact that this wasn’t really an issue in the first place, it claims to have now resolved the issue and “thanked” Nik for bringing it to their attention.

Nik explained what was happening last week:

The advice is to log out of Facebook. But logging out of Facebook only de-authorizes your browser from the web application, a number of cookies (including your account number) are still sent along to all requests to facebook.com.

Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit. The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions.

Earlier this year Facebook was busted by a Dutch researcher for gathering browser data from users who had never even been to Facebook.com.

Facebook has denied it could actually use the information gathered but there are many people that just don’t believe that for obvious reasons.

I’m reminded of G-Male, the perfect boyfriend:

[Sources: 2oceansVibe, DailyMail]