Privacy Group To Attack Facebook’s Beacon Ads

Facebook’s Tracking of User Activity Riles Privacy Advocates, Members from the Wall Street Journal reports privacy group MoveOn.org is attacking Facebook over their Beacon Ads product.

MoveOn.org has an online petition that asks:

When you buy a book or movie online–or make a political contribution–do you want that information automatically shared with the world on Facebook?

That is what privacy advocates are worried about. These beacon ads follow you around the web and update your information with your non-Facebook activities. Privacy advocates say this goes too far and Facebook should stop doing this all together or make it much easier to opt out.

Chris Kelly, chief privacy officer of Facebook, told the Wall Street Journal that it is very easy to opt out. Whenever data may be transferred to Facebook, a user has the option to deny that request. How so? The Wall Street Journal says a box is displayed in the corner of your browser telling you the outside web site is sending that information to Facebook. If you do not want that information to be sent, you can click a button that says “No, thanks” and the information won’t be sent.

But privacy advocates say this should be an opt in feature and not an opt out feature.

Find more discussion and coverage on this Facebook controversy at Techmeme.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.