UPDATE: Apparently, Facebook is addressing the issue of persistent cookies, having been exposed and denyin any wrongdoing (of course). But, I suspect that they will already be searching for a workaround in conjunction with their partner sites so that they all can still carry on tracking us.

Logging Out Of Facebook Is Not Enough – I mentioned this briefly, the other day, but it needs to be reiterated: Facebook can track you even if you’ve logged out because it doesn’t delete its browser cookies. This means that you might find that when you’re viewing other websites your friends get to hear about it in their Facebook stream…

Friend of the blog and owner of ghacks.net, Martin Brinkmann points out that there are three add-ins for Chrome, Firefox and Opera (tough if you’re still using IE, but then why would you be?)

• Facebook Blocker [Firefox] – Blocks all Facebook contents on third-party sites.
• Facebook Disconnect [Google Chrome] – Blocks all Facebook traffic from third-party sites.
• Facebook Blocker [Opera] – Identical to the Google Chrome extension, also does what it says on the tin.

Install and enable one of these and you should be protected from at least some of Facebook’s evil manipulations. Of course, the best and ultimate method to block Facebook is simply to delete your account and get some fresh air. Or, if you don’t want to be quite so melodramatic, “deactivate” your account temporarily and activate it only, say, once a week, to catch up with friends.