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I honestly don’t understand the BFD people are having with Beacon. There wasn’t close to this much of an uproar (some but not much) when Gmail came out and was effectively “reading” your email.

Does facebook need to fix Beacon to ensure that EVERYONE gets the chance to opt out of the Toast pop-up? Yes, of course. But Facebook is about sharing, networking, all of that fun stuff– and I am afraid this uproar may kill off early one of, in my opinion, the coolest advancements on the web to come around in a while.

@madthoughts:
I agree, it’s a very cool system. But one which has many implications in regards to people’s privacy and therefore should be as open and clear as possible. We should know exactly what it saves, and we should all have the option to not use it. It shouldn’t have to be a BFD.

Also, Facebook is about sharing, but it’s about sharing things you choose to share. There is nothing that appears in your profile that you did not opt to enter yourself.

I would hope that when you click “no thanks” the information isn’t even being created. Deleted is good, but if it never existed, it can never be stored.

@Nate I totally understand your point of view, although I never opt’d in for the “What’s Popular in Your Network” ads that pop-up in my newsfeeds. But something about this controversy strikes me as Facebook “hatin’” or Anti-Zuckerberg zealousness.

But as I stated before– look at Gmail. Reports have shown that Google saves email long after I’ve ‘permanently’ deleted them and their servers comb through everything I send looking for contextual keywords to place ads. They are reading my emails. [I love gmail BTW :)]

Beacon is a simple statement: Your friend, XXXX bought/looked at/added/ YYYY. Add to that you can simply click ‘No, thanks’.

To me its far less invasive and actually quite innocuous compared to the data other sites keep.

Their recently announced solution, not adding it to the news feed until you’ve logged in and told it to do so, sounds like a fair enough comprimise.

“No thanks” should mean “don’t collect any information about what I just did online” not “don’t publish any information about what I just did online”.

While it’s great that the XXX movie I just (hypothetically) purchased online won’t appear in my Facebook newsfeed for all to see, what I want is for Facebook to never know about that purchase at all without my permission. Not “publishing” data about my online activities is not the same as not collecting data about my online activities. So, good for Facebook for not publishing private data about my online activities for all the world to see without my permission. Now, they need to take it a step further and stop collecting private data about my online activities without my permission. If they don’t, I’ll be disappointed!

I was never concerned about my FRIENDS knowing about my third-party interactions without my permission, I was concerned about FACEBOOK knowing about my third-party interactions without my permission. And I still am.

I agree that this is a major concern. Facebook’s privacy policy is pretty scary. (ie; you have none and they can do anything they want with your information in perpetuity). If they are collecting information against your expressed wishes via third parties, what control do you have over your information at all?

I would think that those third parties seriously need to look over their own privacy policies. They may well be in violation of them.

Regardless, this process is creating a maze which will make it more and more difficult to maintain control over our information as well as making it more difficult to to action when legal boundaries are breached.

This is skating very close to the line, in my opinion.

@madthoughts

I can’t believe that you are so ignorant (still) about Gmail. They are NOT “reading your emails” for heavens sake. It is electronically and automatically scanned to target advertisements! This scanning of email is done by every single email provider with spam protection!

Also, the issue here is that even though you may say “no thanks” and opt out of Beacon, Facebook still takes your data… even though you said no.

“there is no way for me to know. But they are without a doubt receiving it.”

If you look you can view the _POST_ data and _GET_ data with firebug. There is a way you “know”.

Although I agree that privacy is a big deal. I don’t see why this is… Does it only pop this thing up when you are logged into facebook? I have a facebook account, but can’t be stuffed testing, although I have never seen this pop up… But if that is the case, then can’t you just not log in to facebook while browsing other sites. That way there is no way for facebook to collect information about you… Who stays on facebook for more then 5 minutes anyway? It is so boring…

How do they know that it is *you* who is shopping on *your* computer? What if a bunch of people use the same computer? Is it from the email you use on, say, Amazon? Or is it just cookies on the computer? Becuase this is all a problem…

@ediblethoughts & hank:
Beacon works by accessing your Facebook cookie when you are browsing other websites. You don’t have to be logged in to Facebook at the time. There could be a cookie from a previous login on your computer and that’s all it needs .

You can actually opt out of sending Facebook any info at all in Kongregate’s notification settings.

anyone ever realized that what our computers broadcast on the internet is essentially words that we say ourselves, with regard to slander//lible suits?
if we inform our computer that we do NOT want something to be said, anything that our computer says that we say not to is essentially slander/lible.

so.. what is it that we do about this?

@Anonymous
Semantics: Gmail does “read” your email. It is unwanted and for benefit of marketers. Versus scanning for spam or viruses which nis done for my benefit and my desire.
same concept for facebook: expectations, desires and benefits. Maybe is time we redefine some concepts.

Hi,

The comment in question above was a miscommunication. I was speaking specifically to if data is STORED when someone clicks “No, Thanks”. We have contacted the NYT to clear this up but are still waiting for an update to be posted. Please find a complete explanation below.

When a Facebook user takes a Beacon-enabled action on a participating site, information is sent to Facebook in order for Facebook to operate Beacon technologically. If a Facebook user clicks “No, thanks” on the partner site notification, Facebook does not use the data and deletes it from its servers. Separately, before Facebook can determine whether the user is logged in, some data may be transferred from the participating site to Facebook. In those cases, Facebook does not associate the information with any individual user account, and deletes the data as well.

I hope this clears up any confusion.

Use the BlockSite add-on for Firefox and add the following to the blocked sites list:
http://*facebook.com/beacon/*

@madthoughts: All reputable systems providers keep backups for long periods of time, and there are legitimate reasons for doing so. The real question is what sorts of controls a provider has in place to protect the data they have, whether that data is stored in a live system or on a backup tape. As for gmail, there is no comparison between it and Beacon. I don’t know much about the technical details of gmail, but if ALL it does is scan email for keywords — that’s a big IF — but if that’s all it does, it seems harmless. As has already been pointed out, this is no different, as far as invasion of privacy goes, from spam filters. For that matter, it’s not different in any important way from what the system has to do just to deliver the email to your screen so you can read it.

@Ben: Nate said that he had no way of knowing whether Facebook was *storing* the information it received (e.g., in a back-end database). POST and GET won’t tell you that.

One thing that you people are completely overlooking with respect to your analysis of Gmail is that all of your e-mail is read by means of spam detection software. It happens through text scanning and data mining. This has been happening for years. Gmail’s ads system most likely works in the same way. It’s automated.

As for Facebook, this is a direct conveyance of user actions and preferences. It matters. Whereas Gmail uses aggregate data for analysis and ad suggestion, this is informing of your specific purchasing suggestions. It’s pretty scary. Outside of this, it’s pretty evil on the part of Facebook. It should have been opt-in from the start.

As for anti-Zuckerburgisms, one thing you must understand is that this is a backlash against Facebook and Zuckerburg’s hubris. It’s not irrational. It’s a case of an immature company making unwise decisions.

oh boy. here we go again…

well, as it was obviously expected, Facebook already issued a statement explaining that this is due to their technological implementation of login (obvious: it was based on cookies, people!). More details here: http://community.ca.com/blogs/securityadvisor/default.aspx

Yeah, we need to keep an eye on those guys, but I’m tired of people making up conspiracy theory stories just to to attract traffic to their blogs. gmail is much more a concern and no one complains anymore. Behavior targeting is slamming at our doors and has much worse implications, Cell phone operators have a ridisculous rich amount of information about all us, and we quietly take it for granted.

let’s grow up and face it. We should worry more about with what the company DOES with the data, than with the amount of information they have.

[…] to opt out of this service if they want to. If you listen to Facebook, they say there is. But Nate over at IdeaShower.com would disagree. Basically, using a plugin for Firefox that lets him know whenever information is sent to a third […]

It’s a shame that Facebook staff seem a bit shady.

Anyone else think that MySpace staff do the same as Facebook? WHY NOT?!

I thought when you bought something on a website, they were not supposed to provide your info to ANY third party. Isn’t this usually spelled out in their privacy policy? So if a website such as Fandango.com provided your information to Facebook in any way shape or form, wouldn’t this actually be a violation of their contract with you and illegal? Facebook may be the recipient, but isn’t it ultimately Fandango’s or any other site’s legal obligation to protect your information in the first place?

face book sucks,They sound like a personnel data miner bet they sell the info without regards to the individuals need for privacy.I will not use it.I tried it and I wasn’t impressed at all. Why do you use it?

[…] update: 01 Dec 2007 Facebook, here is misinformation […]

[…] I’ve been in a wastey-my-own-timey mood this morning, because I have had time to find this recent reply by Facebook’s Chamath Palihapitiya to the guy who discovered that Facebook is spying on its […]

[…] {more from IdeaShower as well, who catches a Facebook executive either not actually knowing what’s going on, or inadvertently lying to a blogger} […]

People. If you want you use something on the internet you should accept the fact that your data is accessible to others one way or the other. If you don’t like it, don’t use it.

Be called ignorant aside, this was a great post and a great conversation. Thanks N! And thanks for the updates.