Most people go on browsing the web while connected to their facebook/gmail/etc.

Question

Most people go on browsing the web while connected to their facebook/gmail/etc. accounts. Other websites somehow know what accounts you're logged in.

For example, if you go to hide.me's torrent page, it will tell you what logins of yours were detected, even though you never (explicitly) approved this website to access your account.

I know that switching to "private browsing" and/or using extensions such as Ghostery help in some ways, but is there a more straighforward way to block this?

How can I hide my logged in sessions from other websites?

Explanation / Answer

I think what you are noticing is a client-side acknowledgement of your sessions with Facebook, Gmail, etc. If a sharing script originates from facebook.com and you have an active session with that hostname, they will present a streamlined share button (for example) for your account. The website linking you to the script on Facebook cannot see who you are according to Facebook, or according to any hostnames that they do not control, if you do not explicitly authorize them to access that information.

In other words: if your browser currently holds a session cookie for facebook.com, then you will be able to use account-specific features of that script. It's meant as a matter of convenience, although it would give Facebook a pretty good ledger of where you've been and what you're up to (but no more than Google's tracking cookies). You can at least go incognito in Chrome or Firefox if you want to avoid leaks like that while working through a secure proxy.

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