rbenhase

For those wondering, the new privacy policy allows ShareThis (who just acquired this plugin) to send your usage information to third-party advertisers and place tracking cookies/pixels on their behalf. It’s a very sneaky way for the new owners to further monetize the plugin. From their policy:

We may share non-aggregate, non-personally identifiable Usage Information, including audience segments, with third party advertisers and publishers to assist us and them in delivering relevant, targeted advertising that is aligned with user interests. For example, these companies may use such information (e.g., click stream information, browser type, time and date, subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over) in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of greater interest to you. Your preferences collected through this process may be used to influence which types of marketing messages you receive across sites that we work with.

While using the ShareThis Services, We may place third party advertisers’ and publishers’ cookies and pixels on their behalf regarding Usage Information.

This was such a simple, lightweight social sharing plugin… but I fear it’s now going to become much more bloated and trashy, like most of the others out there.

This is happening to me, too, in version 2.0.40. Had to deactivate the plugin to avoid it bringing my entire site down.