Shariff: social media buttons with Privacy

shariff-social media buttons with privacyWith Shariff you can protect the privacy of your website visitors and stop the ‘snooping’ of social networks such as Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. Your visitors will have the same experience as with the normal Social Share Buttons but WITHOUT sending any Data to the Social Networks..

With Shariff you can use social media without putting your privacy at risk. The c’t project Shariff replaces the usual Share buttons of social networks and protects your browsing habits from prying eyes. A single click of the button is enough to share information with others. You need not do anything else for this – the webmaster has already taken care of everything. The usual social media buttons transmit the user data on every page request on Facebook & Co. and give the social networks exact information about your surfing habits (user tracking).
YOU DO NOT EVEN HAVE TO BE A MEMBER OF THOSE NETWORKS NOR NEED TO BE LOGGED IN- JUST BY VISITING ANY WEBSITE WITH SOCIAL MEDIA BUTTONS THEY WILL STILL TRANSMIT CERTAIN INFO BACK TO THEIR SERVERS.
In Contrast the Shariff Share Button ONLY make direct Contact with the Social Network when your Website Visitor actually CLICKS on the Share Button. This prevents that you leave a digital trail on each page visited, and improves data protection. This way you can liken at will, + 1’s or tweet – the Social Networks will be none the wiser about Pages you have visited and NOT used the Share Buttons..

The privacy advantage of Shariff

The common share buttons represent a significant privacy problem because they go unnoticed, and establish contact with the servers of the social networks without you actually giving consent or even knowing about it.
Facebook for example send the number of “Likes” directly to the visitor’s browser -, and documents the individual surfing behavior.
Shariff appears here as an intermediate instance: Instead of the browser, the server of the website owner requests the number of Likes – and also to maintain this once per minute the Traffic in limits. The visitor remains anonymous.
Shariff simplifies and replaces the previous 2-click solution that three years ago in the c’t article 2 clicks for more privacy was presented.

Shariff is open source and has been developed by c’t and heise online. The source code and manuals to include the modules are available on GitHub for download – where you will also find a demo page , where you can try out the buttons.

If you need help adding the Shariff Social Media with Privacy Buttons to your Website ( I am using them on THIS Website), please make contact here.

P.S. This Article was translated from German (Google is your Friend) and some words might be slightly off. The Original Article in German can be found on the HEISE.DE Website here.