Meta, formerly Facebook, is rolling out Pseudonymised Facebook Identifiers (PFBIDs) to deter unauthorised data ‘scraping’.

Scraping is the automated collection of data from a website or app and can be authorised or unauthorised.

Unauthorised scraping usually involves guessing identifiers or using purchased identifiers to scrape people’s data. In some cases, scrapers collect identifiers and cross-reference phone numbers or other publicly available data to create reusable datasets that could potentially be sold on for profit.

Facebook’s PFBIDS combine timestamps to generate a unique time-rotating identifier.

As we phase out the ability to access the original identifiers, this helps deter unauthorised data scraping by making it harder for attackers to guess, connect and repeatedly access data, Meta said.

Meta added that the identifiers are not designed to prevent browser tools from removing tracking components from the URL and that this process is used to better protect people’s privacy from certain types of enumeration and time-delayed attacks while preserving the ability to have long-lived links.

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