Google Engineer Builds Facebook Disconnect

Tired of the endless unsolicited entreaties to “Connect via Facebook” as you surf the web? Excited for Y Connect and want to keep a clean palate beforehand? Scared about Facebook not necessarily having your best interests at heart when it comes to privacy?

In any case, Google engineer Brian Kennish, inspired by the most recent Facebook privacy and data debacles, has decided to create “Facebook Disconnect” i.e. a Google Chrome extension that obliterates all Facebook Connect functionality and all traffic from third party sites to Facebook servers if one searches the web through Chrome. (You can try it out here)

Facebook Disconnect will “presumably” prevent the sending of data back to Facebook across the one million sites that use the Facebook Connect service. So far the ones I’ve tested it on (ehem, Huffington Post) seem to be kosher as I no longer see Facebook integration.

Kennish says he created the extension to help quell his desire to delete his Facebook account and that he’s tested it out successfully across a sizable amount of previously Facebook-Connectable sites, including our own (screen shots above) with absolutely no encouragement from Google or Facebook, despite the fact that he works for the former, “Nobody at Google asked or encouraged me to do so, or probably, even knows who I am.”

Okay well now they do.

Thumbnail image: Gizmodo