Facebook Beacon Privacy Issues Worse Than Previously Thought?

An anonymous reader writes "Further developments in the Facebook Beacon affair ... According to PC World, a Computer Associates researcher claims that Beacon, when installed on participating sites, is sending data about users' activity back to Facebook, even when a user is logged out of Facebook - despite Facebook's claims to the contrary."

Comments

Re:FredDC

[Anonymous Coward]

no privacy OFF a social networking site.. you should be shocked. repeatedly.

Re:Microsoft and $$$

[wish bot]

You're going to seriously tell me that when all these people joined FB of their own volition that they wanted their web browsing habits to be tracked, stored, and probably acted on in some fashion? I think it's more likely that they joined so they could hook up with their friends...you know, kind of like what FB was actually about. The subsequent invasion of privacy, tracking and collation of personal habits certainly IS very 'big brotherish' if you want to participate in modern society in any meaningful form. Or you could sever all ties to the internet, "opt-out" and go and live under a rock, is that the choice that what you call 'capitalism' has given us?

Re:Block the "Feature"

[Dogtanian]

This might be useful for some people. It shows you how to block Facebook's Beacon. Not to demean the solution you gave, which I'm sure does its intended job well. However, it's really just a technical fix that is papering over one of the symptoms.

It doesn't- and can't- address the far more serious underlying cause. Namely that Facebook and the other companies involved are clearly totally contemptuous of their users' privacy and quite happy to screw them over in the name of a few quick bucks. And then hide this behind a weaselish and unclear "opt-in-by-default" agreement. (Yes, it's acceptable for them to make money from a free website; no, it's absolutely *not* acceptable for them to do it in this way).

Frankly, I'm glad I don't use Facebook. At one stage I may have believed that it was possibe to balance the invasion one's privacy by controlling what appeared on their page- and then some low-down **** like this comes along. It's one thing to have your Facebook information publicly available, quite another to have your activities on apparently unrelated sites made public.

I wouldn't touch Facebook with a ******* barge pole now. Your fix may work on the current problem, but what happens when the next moneygrabbing exploit comes along? What happens when these assholes figure out a totally different way to use the information they already have on you?

Seriously, fuck that, and fuck Facebook. Their behaviour was already unacceptable- regardless of how they snuck it into the legal agreement. With this latest news on top, I seriously hope that this marks a turning point in Facebook's fortunes. Joe Public isn't as concerned about his privacy as he should be, but when it comes to blabbing about his Christmas present purchases without his knowledge, it puts it in more concrete terms.