Be very aware when you use sharing icons on a web site

You can give away information and not even be aware you just did so.  Here is how I made this discovery and I will tell you how to avoid doing this in the future.

I was rushing to complete research in order to make a deadline and I kept getting this very annoying popup inviting me to “share this” with my friends.  No, I didn’t want to share.  I just wanted to read the article and glean some information.

The popup kept blocking my browsing this article and it was getting really, really annoying.  I clicked the “X” in the upper right of the popup window once again.

Finally, since this was not going to leave me in piece, I decided to investigate this huge gnat that was flying into my eyes.

I discovered that this was not a popup in the normal sense.  This screen popped up when I unknowingly did a “mouse-over” on sections of the screen – and unlike most mouse-overs, the window stayed on the screen blocking the article I was trying to read.

The Share This pest is a product from the ShareThis Inc.  Their tag line for this product is Powering The Sharing Revolution; I’d like to rename it Inciting Revolutions, as it is starting to inspire me to join a revolution against such annoyances.

I quote directly from the ShareThis web site: “ShareThis offers the most innovative sharing platform for today’s social audience. Our suite of solutions for advertisers and publishers inspire people to do more of what we believe is the foundation of digital life – to share.”

Besides getting in the way of my work, ShareThis has already collected some of my information because it knows who I am by the “Hi Fred Hoot!” greeting at the top of the popup.  Who knows what other information it knows about me.

Personally, the information collecting doesn’t bother me as anyone with the knowledge of a fifth-grader can find out a plethora of information about me from pithy comments on Microsoft Word Easter eggs to AVE to all the blogs I have written for.

They do ask for more information, like the email addresses of anyone with whom I would like to share this particular article.  It also asks to import my Google and Yahoo! Email address books so everyone whose email I happen to have can also be “blessed” with intrusions such as this.

In the lower right, there appears Sign out and Do not track links.  Clicking on the Do not track link brings me to the ShareThis Privacy Policy.

I see a blue Opt Out button.  Clicking on this button, I get the message “You have opted out.” in green lettering.  I do not know what good this did, as the popup still intrudes on my browsing pleasure.

Clicking the Sign out link does not stop the popup.  It does clear my name off of the popup, though.

The privacy policy shows an interesting tidbit: “Many of our ShareThis features can be used without registering with us.”  So, they used my Facebook account to log on to their service without my permission.  With this, they then “let me use” their “features” (and presumably collect more information on me) without “registering” with them.

On top of all this, it gives the option of Email, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google, Yahoo, and even more to share.

Now, here is the dirty little secret: you have probably signed up with these people and not even known it!  Here is what an embedded tool bar looks like:

If you hover over any of the two “share” buttons or even let the mouse’s movement brush over them the ShareThis popup will appear.  All the other share buttons like Facebook and Tweet work like any other share button, except you have signed on to ShareThis and given permission for them to use you.  I must have done this at one time or another and not realized that they signed me up without my knowledge.

Their privacy policy says they can collect your information “when you use our sharing icon to share content, when you visit a web site using the ShareThis Services or when you view or respond to advertisements served by us or on our behalf.”  In other words, you can wind up giving away your information just by sharing an article.

There is a simple way to avoid giving away your information when sharing with your friends:

1. Copy the URL of the article you wish to share.
2. Open the app you want to use to share, for example Facebook.
3. Paste the URL into the app and add your comments, pithy or otherwise.
4. Do this for any other social media site you wish.

Follow this advice and you will have eliminated one way your information gets distributed.