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Facebook Defends Privacy-Invading Beacon Program: My Response

rkamens's picture
Submitted by rkamens on Wed, 2007-11-21 02:51.

Note to media: Due to the high levels of interest on this campaign, some of our members have made themselves available to speak with the media. Please direct inquiries to Ringo Kamens at 2600denver {at} gmail.com.

Facebook issued this statement today in response to the campaign lead by MoveOn and supported by Binary Freedom Activists to make Beacon an opt-in system.

“We encourage feedback from our users on new products, but in this case, the MoveOn.org-led group misrepresents how Facebook Beacon works. Beacon gives users an easy way to share relevant information from other sites with their friends on Facebook. Information is shared with a small selection of a user’s trusted network of friends, not publicly on the Web or with all Facebook users. Users also are given multiple ways to choose not to share information from a participating site, both on that site and on Facebook.”

Let's break this thing down:
"Beacon gives users an easy way to share relevant information from other sites with their friends on Facebook."

Giving a user an easy way to share things and sharing things for them are two completely different things. Giving them a way to share their purchases would mean having your several-second pop-up last a little longer and allowing them to click "tell my friends about this!", not giving them a few short seconds to stop you from doing so.

"Information is shared with a small selection of a user’s trusted network of friends, not publicly on the Web or with all Facebook users."

Depending on the user's privacy settings, this absolutely could be the entire internet. For most people, this would just be their network or friends. Chances are these users are buying Christmas presents for their friends and people in their network. And so the information becomes damaging.

Users also are given multiple ways to choose not to share information from a participating site, both on that site and on Facebook.

As shown by MoveOn, these "multiple ways" are hardly sufficient. There are multiple documented cases of people not realizing this opportunity was available. Furthermore, many of them assume their privacy settings will protect this information from becoming public but the beacon program bypasses these restrictions. There is no way to completely opt-out of beacon so you must opt-out each time you visit a site. Day by day. Month by month. Knowing you will never truly be safe.

The core issue is that in under 12 hours, we have been able to find 4000 facebook users who were online at that time and opposed to the way Facebook has implemented beacon. Facebook should listen to users and choose them over the interests of big corporate information banks and advertisers. Facebook: Please don't ruin Christmas!

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