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Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

Upon opening this page, some Kinja registration appeared, suggesting the username Luc0895. My first name is Luc, so I'm extremely curious as to how it knew this. I'm not logged in to io9 nor another Gawker website as far as I know. Anyone else had this?

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Are they using some form of integration API such as that offered by facebook or G+ for the exchange of comments and likes/+1s?

That's what I'm wondering about, I was never asked for permission to share details with io9. Perhaps a few years ago on another Gawker site, but how would they link me? I wasn't using the same IP or browser or anything.

I am logged in to Google+, so that might be it, but it only accepts cookies strictly from accounts.google.com and plus.google.com, for example api.google.com or google.com itself does not work (cookies are removed as soon as all tabs of that website are closed).

Maybe it was your browser? I've had firefox auto-fill forms on websites I have never been to before.

Hmm, that might be it. It sounds weird that Firefox shares personal data, but still they might consider a first name to be non-private. Interesting suggestion, thanks.

Are you logged into facebook?

I don't have Facebook, nor are cookies enabled for FB. Got a cookie killer add-on that only keeps cookies based on a whitelist. And even if I had, how would they obtain my personal data from it without asking my permission?

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