How do I stop websites knowing my Facebook identity?
Q
I sometimes find my Facebook profile picture in website comment boxes. In many cases I have never visited the website before. I find it rather creepy. I do not visit my Facebook page often, and very rarely leave comments. I also remove my browsing history from my browser, which is Chrome, so there should be no cookies that allow these sites to know that I have a Facebook account.
Roger Gradeless
A
What you’re seeing is a Facebook plug-in called Facebook Comments. This is hosted by Facebook itself, on its own servers, but displayed by code that’s ‘embedded’ in whatever website you’re visiting.
Creepy though it can certainly feel, any website displaying the plug-in doesn’t know that it’s ‘you’ visiting. Rather, the website’s code effectively asks Facebook’s servers to load the plug-in. If you happen to be logged into Facebook in another tab (or just didn’t log out when you closed the Facebook tab), then your name and photo will appear in the plug-in.
This might put your mind at ease that such websites haven’t stolen your Facebook identity (though they might of course be snooping on you in other ways). But if you’re still not happy, you should log out of Facebook – and make sure you stay logged out.
First, visit the Facebook website as usual then, at the top right, click the down-pointing arrow, then click Log Out (see screenshot top). Next, make sure that your Facebook password hasn’t been saved by Chrome. Click Chrome’s menu button (three dots, top right) then click Settings, followed by Advanced. Now scroll down to ‘Passwords and forms’ to find and click ‘Manage passwords’. If you see an entry for Facebook under Saved Passwords, click the three dots to its right, then click Remove (see screenshot above).