Help:Facebook ads on Wikia

Occasionally, Wikia users will see ads on our pages which appear to use personal details from Facebook, including names, locations, friends or even profile photos from Facebook. This can be understandably worrisome, but we'd like to assure you that your privacy is not at risk. Only you see these personalized ads -- no other Wikia user or staff will ever see the information contained there.

Please be advised that we do not directly host any of the advertisements you see. We do not have access to the information that they store or transmit between their servers and you.

How do these ads work?
The reason that you are seeing your information on our site, via someone else's ads, even while logged out of Facebook, is because of the Facebook application permissions system. If you are seeing these ads it is because at some time you gave permission to an advertiser-built Facebook application to have limited access to your profile and friend data. (We can't identify which app it might be; many of the entertaining games, quizzes and other apps on Facebook are distributed by advertisers.)

When you gave permission for this access, the application stored the numerical ids (but not the names) of your friends in a third-party cookie on your browser. That cookie is tied to the application or advertiser's domain. Even when you log out of Facebook, the cookie is still stored on your computer.

When you visit Wikia (or any other site using that same ad provider), we might happen to be running an ad from that same provider network. Since they can detect those third party cookies on your browser, the ads they show you can access Facebook's public API and get the public profile images of your friends, based on their numerical id.

At no point in this transaction is Wikia.com or Wikia Inc. involved in any access or transmission of private data. It is purely a transaction between your browser and the advertiser's domain. No other user will see the same ad with the same individual information on it.

If you object to this usage of your public data, please revoke permission for Facebook applications you do not trust, or contact Facebook.com's customer support for more information in these matters.