Facebook Users Complain of New Ad-Based Tracking

Tech.Luver noted a story about facebook users complaining over ads where their shopping habits are shared with their friends as if they are endorsing products. The neatest part is that you can opt out- if you click a box that disappears after 20 seconds... wait to long, and they assume you are totally fine with it.

Comments

I guess accuracy is too much to hope for

[blowdart]

The neatest part is that you can opt out- if you click a box that disappears after 20 seconds... wait to long, and they assume you are totally fine with it.

Not true; the FaceBook provides a secondary method of opting out, just like you can control lots of privacy tweaks already. There's a nice new option for "External Websites: You can edit your privacy settings for external websites sending stories to your profile." (this is not to say there aren't privacy problems with Facebook in general)

I guess actually looking before writing a news article would have been just too hard.

Re:I guess accuracy is too much to hope for

[Coopjust]

The main problem is that you have to opt out AFTER a site tries (or succeeds) at adding a story to your profile. If you don't respond to the popup (20 seconds OR a blocker), it assumes that you do indeed want to add the story to your profile. While you can disable it later, it might be a few hours or days before you notice if you're not a heavy Facebook user. And, you can only disable it on a site-by-site basis in this manner.

Many nontechnical users that have hare angry. Many Slashdotters use NoScript or something to that effect.

If you get the Blocksite plugin and block *.facebook.com/beacon/*, you can use Facebook normally and not have to worry about sites that implement it- the script that runs the beacon never gets to run, and there is no chance for the story to be sent.

Re:I guess accuracy is too much to hope for

[DustyShadow]

I just checked my facebook privacy settings and it just gives a stupid message and has no options to opt out. I guess my privacy has to be violated first and only then am I able to tell them that I didn't like it.

Show your friends what you like and what you're up to outside of Facebook. When you take actions on the sites listed below, you can choose to have those actions sent to your profile. Please note that these settings only affect notifications on Facebook. You will still be notified on affiliate websites when they send stories to Facebook. You will be able to decline individual stories at that time. No sites have tried sending stories to your profile

Re:I guess accuracy is too much to hope for

[$random_var]

FaceBook provides a secondary method of opting out, just like you can control lots of privacy tweaks already. There's a nice new option for "External Websites: You can edit your privacy settings for external websites sending stories to your profile."

This is only partly true: the secondary opt-out only applies to stories created after the opt-out. Facebook will continue to publish stories that were created before opting out.

I know this from personal experience after I tried the primary opt-out but was too slow (I stopped to try and figure out what I was opting out of, and then it published it while I was still trying to figure out what was going on!) Then I tried the secondary opt-out after hunting for it, and discovered that didn't stop the story from being published either.

Re:that's not the issue, though?

[Phlegethon_River]

Because it isn't just their privacy policy. It is the page where you set your privacy options. Thats why.

Re:What do you expect on a free service?

[DustyShadow]

The problem really has nothing to do with what information is on your page. I have little information other than my name, age, school and these ads will still show up simply by purchasing something on an outside website. I can't opt out until AFTER it happens.

That's called negative agreement

[Z00L00K]

and it's actually illegal in some countries.

Re:Wait...I'm confused

[sitarah]

"How do Fandango and Overstock know that the buyer has an account on Facebook? How do the two get linked up? Cookies?"

Any site that is part of the Beacon affiliate network has a script that can read your Facebook cookies. The code is here, for any interested. http://www.facebook.com/beacon/beacon.js.php

You buy a product on Overstock. It gets some information on your Facebook account, then asks if you wish to 'publish this story' to your Facebook account. You can click:
1) Learn more.
2) This isn't you. No publish.
3) No thanks. No publish.
4) Close. Publish later.
5) Ignore. Publish later.

4 is the problem; you can ignore or close the box, and it will, instead of thinking that means a No Publish, ask you AGAIN when you log in to Facebook. If you ignore that one, too, or do anything but specifically click No (the X in this case), it *will* publish. It's unintuitive.

Whether this is user-error or intentional design, users are also reporting that they have to opt-out of these affiliates site by site to stop publishing, because opting out of Beacon itself is insufficient or not possible. That's why people are irritated -- they never downloaded an app or asked for Beacon, didn't realize they had to specifically tell it 'no', and can't figure out how to turn it off.

Opting Out

[megazork]

If you look at it more closely you can't opt out of the service generally. Every time a new site tries sending stuff to your news feed you have to go back to the Facebook privacy page and opt out of that particular site.

Aside from AdBlock, you can do the following to effectively de-activate this service:
1. Get Firefox
2. Download and Install the BlockSite plugin for Firefox.
3. After restarting Firefox select 'Add-ons' from the Tools menu.
4. Click the 'Options' button on the BlockSite extension
5. Click the 'Add' button
6. Enter http://facebook.com/beacon/* into the input box
7. Click 'OK'
8. Click 'OK' again and you are good to go.

Re:Give us the List of Companies involved

[garbletext]

This might be a partial list, as I've heard reports of participating sites not on this list. But Here ya go:

        * AllPosters.com
        * Blockbuster
        * Bluefly.com (NASDAQ: BFLY)
        * CBS Interactive (CBSSports.com & Dotspotter) (NYSE: CBS)
        * eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY)
        * ExpoTV
        * Fandango
        * Gamefly
        * IAC InterActiveCorp. (NASDAQ: IACI) sites (CollegeHumor, Busted Tees, iWon, Citysearch, Pronto.com, echomusic)
        * Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE)'s Hotwire
        * Joost
        * Kiva
        * Kongregate
        * LiveJournal
        * Live Nation (NYSE: LYV)
        * Mercantila
        * National Basketball Association
        * NYTimes.com (NYSE: NYT)
        * Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK)
        * (RED)
        * Redlight
        * SeamlessWeb
        * Sony Online Entertainment LLC (NYSE: SNE)
        * Sony Pictures (NYSE: SNE)
        * STA Travel
        * The Knot (NASDAQ: KNOT)
        * TripAdvisor
        * Travel Ticker
        * Travelocity
        * TypePad
        * viagogo
        * Vox
        * Yelp
        * WeddingChannel.com
        * Zappos.com

from
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/11/22/facebooks-creepy-ads-put-your-mouth-where-your-money-is/
which sources the info from
http://sev.prnewswire.com/computer-electronics/20071106/AQTU20606112007-1.html