Facebook Beacon

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It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Criticism of Facebook. (Discuss)

Beacon is a part of Facebook's advertisement system that sends data from external websites to Facebook, ostensibly for the purpose of allowing targeted advertisements and allowing users to share their activities with their friends. Beacon was launched on November 6, 2007 with 44 partner websites.^[1]

1 Privacy concerns
2 Technology
3 Partner websites
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Privacy concerns

Beacon created a considerable controversy soon after it was launched, due to privacy concerns. On November 20, 2007, civic action group MoveOn.org created a Facebook group and online petition demanding that Facebook not publish their activity from other websites without explicit permission from the user. In less than ten days, this group gained 50,000 members.^[2] Beacon was later changed to require that any actions transmitted to the website would have to be approved by the Facebook user before being published.^[3] On November 29, 2007, Stefan Berteau, a security researcher for Computer Associates, published a note on his tests of the Beacon system, and found that data was still being collected and sent to Facebook despite users' opt-outs and not being logged into Facebook at the time.^[4]^[5] This revelation was in direct contradiction to the statements made by Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook's vice president of marketing and operations, in an interview with The New York Times published the same day:

Q. If I buy tickets on Fandango, and decline to publish the purchase to my friends on Facebook, does Facebook still receive the information about my purchase?
A. “Absolutely not. One of the things we are still trying to do is dispel a lot of misinformation that is being propagated unnecessarily.”^[6]

On November 30, 2007, Louise Story of The New York Times blogged that not only had she received the impression that Beacon would be an explicit opt-in program, but that Coca-Cola had also had a similar impression, and as a result, had chosen to withdraw their participation in Beacon.^[7]

On December 5, 2007, Facebook announced that it would allow people to opt-out of Beacon.^[8] Founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized for the controversy.

This has been the philosophy behind our recent changes. Last week we changed Beacon to be an opt-in system, and today we're releasing a privacy control to turn off Beacon completely. You can find it here.^[9] If you select that you don't want to share some Beacon actions or if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won't store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook.

A class action lawsuit against Blockbuster Inc. has been filed over the the release of customer rental and sales records to Facebook through the Facebook Beacon program. The lawsuit alleges the release of the records was a violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act.^[10]

[edit] Technology

Facebook Beacon works through the use of a 1x1 GIF web bug on the third-party site and Facebook cookies.^[11] Clearing Facebook cookies from your browser or explicitly logging-off from Facebook will prevent the third-party site from knowing your Facebook identity.^[12]