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The mobile facebook website does something quite creepy. After you click on a link that takes you to a new website in a new tab, if you click on another link from Facebook, it is somehow able to close the last opened tab and open a new one.

The usage model that facebook seems to be enforcing is that you read the article that you clicked on, and then come back to Facebook so that they can figure out how much time you spent there. You can't open multiple links in the background and read them at leisure.

They are able to close the background page even when you navigate to some other link from the opened tab! The URL has no special facebook specific crud. How are they able to close background tabs in Chrome like this?

Isn't that just what happens when the target attribute is set to something other than _blank?
Thanks, I'm not a web developer, so can you tell me if this allows a page to control the opened tabs in the background?