I have a growing dislike towards Facebook and their ever increasing tracking business. I use FB as little as possible and block (Firefox has a nice Ghostery addon) their tracker. Did you know that when you are logged in, Facebook indexes the websites you visit? BUT! I used that tracker myself on this very website with the ‘like’ plugin. I decided to ditch that plugin and just make a link to the Gangleri.nl Facebook page for people who want to get the news on their walls. (Theoretically) Facebook will no longer know you are here.
There was another tracker on this website: Gravatar. Gravatar is a service of Automatic, who also write WordPress, the software this website runs on, for “globally recognised avatars”. When using Gravatar WordPress contacts the Gravatar servers even when you are not reading or writing a comment. Annoying! So I disabled Gravatars too.
Douglas P. sings: “Paranoia is an icy start, but a start nonetheless”. Now the world wide web today certainly brings some paranoia, but my intention is to keep this website not only free, but also free from adds (heck, I pay for it all myself so you do not have to), yet even when I do not want to, I give companies ways to track you. No longer (I hope).