Much has been said on facebook’s like button and privacy, since its release nearly one year ago (release comments on TechCrunch in april 2010). It’s now just about everwhere and somehow getting on my nerve.

Facebook is everywhere !

With all the traking ability of the ‘like’ button and the spreading comment system it’s now as if there was no way to go away from facebook, while on the web.

It so simple to disconnect, or is it ?

There is however a simple way, apart from deleting one’s facebook profile, which is to carefully disconnect each time one want to “browse away” from facebook, and reconnect only when in need to see what’s happening there.

Ok, that’s tedious, but that’s where Mozilla’s clever Prism app comes in. It make it very handy to handle several different browsing session as if they were several different application.

The web through a prism

So, I’ve started to use it a few weeks ago and defined a prism “app” for facebook only, while doing most of my usual browsing in my main browser. Less oppressing and quite handy, since the “separate app” stuff is the exact same principle as many smartphone application that just send you to a specific website to do your stuff (and theirs).

Now, facebook is not the only one from which I feel like a little protection is needed since google, with its “google analytics” being used a bit everywhere on the net too can also track the users of any google app. Not even mentioning their very own “+1″ button.

As a conclusion let’s keep in mind that the prism thingy will not make us anonymous on the net nor will it fully preserve our privacy, since cookies and IP address are still good ways to track somebody. However, I don’t feel a urge to go any further in paranoia :) and protecting mysef from those companies to which I have given many personal info, from trying to get even more without my consent is already a good step I guess.

It’s nice too see so much efforts put into innovation, especially since it’s based on open standards and open source software. It also makes the browser and the web itself more and more interesting which is a good reason for big web companies to support them (like Google’s funding¹ ). Anyway with so much openness also in the research projects, it must be fun to be a developper at Mozilla Labs.

On a side note, with the prospect of integrating Ubiquity into Bespin IDE , I guess I’ve been right to set Ubiquity’s keybinding to Alt+x (aka M-x) right from the begining :D

1. and also Microsoft’s cooking ;)