According to subscribers suing, AMC allegedly installed tracking technologies—including the Meta Pixel, the X Tracking Pixel, and Google Tracking Technology—on its website, allowing their personally identifying information to be connected with their viewing history.
Some trackers, like the Meta Pixel, required AMC to choose what kind of activity can be tracked, and subscribers claimed that AMC had willingly opted into sharing video names and URLs with Meta, along with a Facebook ID. “Anyone” could use the Facebook ID, subscribers said, to identify the AMC subscribers “simply by entering https://www.facebook.com/[unencrypted FID]/” into a browser.
X’s ID could similarly be de-anonymized, subscribers alleged, by using tweeterid.com.
Or, just don’t have those IDs by not having accounts. Nobody’s identifying me by my Facebook ID if I don’t have one. Simples
Except Facebook keeps ghost profiles for unregistered users which are created and fed data just by visiting any site that has Facebook integration. They use browser fingerprinting to track activity across those sites and connect user activity to specific profiles, even if you never touch the “login using Facebook/share on Facebook” buttons.
firefox blocks this out of the box
Big issue is you don’t know how well it does this. As you can’t see the other side of the equation.
Even if it’s perfect. Many times I need to use a chromium based browser to use a website properly (the website fault not Firefox). Additionally many apps are just web views that are based on chrome. It’s hard to avoid this type of tracking.
Problem is that even those that have never setup an account with Facebook still have a profile that Facebook built on their behalf. If you are in any photos that friends/family/coworkers uploaded and if even one person named you in the photo, you are now known by fb and anyone who uses that data.
Don’t even need that. Meta crosses multiple platforms now - Instagram, FB, WhatsApp, etc. All you need is for someone you know to have you in their contacts list, and the hit the “allow access” a single time. All of that data is then scraped, cataloged, and cross referenced with everyone else. Name, address, phone numbers, birthday, work address - anything your contact felt it convenient to add about you in their phone. From there it’s just a matter of time until data mining of second and third level contact - or outright data leaks - fill in the rest of your profile and demographic information.