Facebook now offers an option to translate pages, including comments, into any language via a link that appears under public pages’ posts. The feature works through Microsoft’s Bing Translator, and is yet another example of Microsoft and Facebook teaming up to utilize the data-rich Facebook social graph.
In May 2011, Bing debuted social search with a new Facebook integration that surfaces search results based on what a user’s Facebook friends ‘liked’ the most. By installing the Bing Toolbar (PC-only), users have the option to connect through Facebook, thus enabling the social search feature. They can also choose to opt out.
Microsoft’s investment with Facebook has always been strong – they were one of the early investors in the social platform, so Bing has been able to freely integrate with Facebook as they please.
The new Bing Translation feature on Facebook pages is yet another step toward Facebook’s bigger goal: to make the Web fully focused on social search.
Do you use Bing social search? How do you think Facebook’s new translation service will affect Facebook’s global reach?
An Australian technologist has claimed that Facebook can track the web pages you visit, even when you are logged out of the social networking giant.
According to Wollongong-based Nik Cubrilovic, when the user is logged out of Facebook, rather than deleting its tracking cookies, the site merely modifies them, maintaining account information and other unique tokens that can be used to identify its users.
This simply means that any time you visit a web page with a Facebook button or widget, your browser is still sending personally identifiable information back to Facebook.
“Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit,” Cubrilovic wrote in a blog post.
“The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions,” he added.
Cubrilovic said he tried to contact Facebook to inform it of his discovery but did not get a reply, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
He said there were significant risks to the privacy of users, particularly those using public terminals to access Facebook.
“Facebook are front-and-centre in the new privacy debate just as Microsoft were with securityissues a decade ago,” Cubrilovic said.
“The question is what it will take for Facebook to address privacy issues and to give their users the tools required to manage their privacy and to implement clear policies — not pages and pages of confusing legal documentation, and ‘logout’ not really meaning ‘logout’,” he added.
