Facebook has been described as the murderer of privacy. I deleted my personal profile months ago (a process which took over two weeks!) and I haven’t looked back since. Good thing, because it was recently discovered that Facebook’s controversial tracking cookies continue to track user behavior even after the user is logged out of Facebook. What other website puts 9 cookies on your machine (that’s how many I counted when I deleted mine)?

All that being said, I still have some business Facebook pages that I use for marketing and branding. It would be asinine for me to quit using these because they help to bring in additional revenue with very little maintenance overhead. So, if you only use Facebook to promote your brands, you probably don’t have too many privacy concerns to worry about.

Obviously, the simplest way to stop Facebook from tracking you is to delete your personal profile and don’t use Facebook as a replacement for a social life, like I did. I know many folks will not be willing to give up their Facebook profiles (I wasn’t at first), but these folks could at least browse a little safer.

To continue using your Facebook personal profile without being tracked, download an additional web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc.) and only use that browser for Facebook. That way they cannot track any of your online behaviors because you won’t be using any other sites with that browser. Use your default browser for everything else.

Alternatively, you can add an exception to your browser’s cookie settings to block all cookies from the domain facebook.com.

Maybe if I didn’t read the book 1984 when I was 10 I wouldn’t be so paranoid about privacy. Down with Big Brother!