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November 30, 2007
Facebook privacy debacle heats up
MoveOn.org has joined the push against Facebook's newest privacy-invasive marketing technique, the one where Facebook broadcasts a "beacon" of your online shopping to all your friends. Oh, without your consent. As Ellen Nakashima reports in today's Washington Post story Feeling Betrayed, Facebook Users Force Site to Honor Their Privacy: Sean Lane's purchase was supposed to be a surprise for his wife.[...]Without Lane's knowledge, the headline was visible to everyone in his online network, including 500 classmates from Columbia University and 220 other friends, co-workers and acquaintances. And his wife. In response to the 50,000 vocal MoveOn petition signers, Facebook has modified Beacon to apparently ask consent each time it would turn its light on. Yet, adding such a modest "each-use" privacy control isn't the same as offering you a choice of whether you want it as your headlight in the first place. In the story Facebook Retreats on Online Tracking by the New York Times reporters Louise Story and Brad Stone, a Facebook exec says this will all go away and users will "fall in love" with the product. Not this time, we think.
On November 12, we had joined the Center for Digital Democracy in a letter to FTC Chairman Deborah Majoras urging scrutiny of "ambitious new targeted advertising schemes on the part of both Facebook and MySpace."
Posted by Ed Mierzwinski at November 30, 2007 06:06 AM
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