Putting Facebook back in its box

It really annoys me when I've been searching for (say) a new Zimmer frame, and the next time I log into Facebook I'm swamped with adverts for new Zimmer's.

I then imaging some androgynous, bug-eyed, American geek leaning over my shoulder saying "Hey buddy, what are we looking at today?"

I needed to put a stop to this...

A few months ago, I made the switch from Lubuntu to Peppermint OS. Lubuntu had been an irritation since version 18.04 due to various problems with the OS and some of the applications. Peppermint has proved reliable and a joy to use.

One of the features of Peppermint is an application called ICE, which allows you to create Site Specific Browsers (SSB). So I now have Facebook running as an application in an SSB, which is basically a cut-down Firefox interface.

The only disadvantage is that links to other sites within Facebook do not work, so I have to copy the link and paste it into [another] browser. But believe me, this is a very minor irritation.

I also use individual SSBs for each of my home-banking websites (e.g. bank, credit cards, savings accounts & so on).

For general browsing I use Firefox with NoScript enabled. This isn't for everyone, as Javascript is initially disabled on all sites. So the first time you enter a new site you have to decide which scripts to allow to run and which to keep blocked. But to cripple Facebook, I simply never allow it to run scripts.

Here is an example for www.tvguide.co.uk

...as you can see, my system will not allow scripts from facebook.net. In fact I try to only enable as many scripts as I need to get a particular website running, but looking at the example above, there may still be a few 'bad guys' that I need to disable.

so does it work?

Yes, it does look like I've stopped Facebook following me around the internet. I made these changes at the end of last year, when Facebook started giving me adverts for second-hand cars, following a few car sales related searches on my browser.

Facebook is still giving me car adverts because it hasn't 'moved-on' to other items that I've been looking at since (i.e. the last category it has knowledge of is second-hand cars).

Many websites now seem to run a vast collection of scripts each time you load them. This slows down page loads, so every operation takes longer. It also means that lots of organisations are collecting computer related data and they can track which websites your computer is visiting, what you are looking at, and (if you have a Facebook account) who you are!

I guess one alternative to using NoScript would be to black-list Facebook (and others) within the general web browser, leaving it enabled in the SSB. I may try this if I get some time.