Facebook rejects allegation of tracking signed out users

London, Sept 28: World's popular social networking site Facebook has rejected the allegations which claimed that it tracks its users when they sign out. Facebook said that it only uses tracking cookies to personalise content and to make the social networking site more safe and secure.

Recently, an Australian technologist Nik Cubrilovic exposed that when a user logged out from the Facebook account, the service provider did not delete its tracking cookies rather then they modifies them and maintains an account information to identify the user.

"Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit," Cubrilovic wrote in a blog post.

By rejecting Cubrilovic's post, Facebook engineer Gregg Stefancik said that FB did not track any of its logged out users. But Gregg also confessed that Facebook does not delete cookies when users log out and Facebook does it for their safety measure and does not use cookies to take out users information.

"Facebook does not track users across the web. Instead, we use cookies on social plug-ins to personalise content (e.g. show you what your friends liked), to help maintain and improve what we do (e.g. measure click-through rate), or for safety and security (e.g. keeping underage kids from trying to sign up with a different age)," Facebook said in a statement.

"No information we receive when you see a social plug-in is used to target ads, we delete or anonymise this information within 90 days, and we never sell your information," it added.

Facebook also said that cookies are used to identify spammers and phishers and help users regain its account access when it's been hacked by unauthorised person.

OneIndia News