How do I make the Facebook "Like" button not track my users?

Question

I want to have a Facebook "Like" button on one of my pages, but the organization I work for has trepidation concerning the privacy implications of allowing Facebook to keep track of all the users who visit my site.

The typical Like button, as provided by Facebook, is written in JavaScript that is served from the Facebook website. In theory, and quite likely in practice, this allows Facebook to track all users of my site - many of whom are not even Facebook users.

Thus, rather than use the script that Facebook provides and hosts, I would like to simply host an image from my server, and, when the user clicks "Like", they would be redirected to some URL on the Facebook site which would enable them to do whatever it is they need to do to complete the "Like" process.

Is such a process currently supported by Facebook? Does anyone have any experience doing anything similar to this?

Answer 1

You can't simulate a like without permissions and use of Facebook API. But you can use the global Facebook sharing link to make a user share a link without any javascript of them on your site. You just have to customize it:

http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=<url to share>&t=<title of content>

Answer 2

In Germany for example you have to replace all social plugins by placeholders which the visitor has to click before he can like or share something. Those placeholders are for example a graphic of a facebook like-button in grey-scale. You can set a tooltip on it which informs the user he has to click twice on this "placeholder" for more personal data security. When he clicks first time some javascript will load the JS SDK sources from facebook and replaces the placeholder with a real like-button which the user can click after this. So no data will be send to facebook/google/whatever until the user activates the social plugins by itself.

Of course he has to click twice...but this is well practised and the best way IMO. The tooltip on this will also inform him about what he is doing. The easiest way to keep the feeling of a like-button/comment-box etc. is to make a screen of the area and blur/grey-scale it. So you give it an inactive/activate-able look and feel.