Sunday, December 02, 2007

Two Faced

Just when you thought that progress had been made with Facebook's privacy-invading advertising strategies, see Hidden Behind the Face and Suckface, when word comes that the level of intrusion by Facebook and its business cohorts is even worse than originally understood.

The Washington Post carries a PC World story, Facebook's Beacon More Intrusive Than Previously Thought, involving the new Beacon advertising program. As it explained:

Beacon is a major part of the Facebook Ads platform that Facebook introduced with much fanfare several weeks ago. Beacon tracks certain activities of Facebook users on more than 40 participating Web sites, including those of Blockbuster and Fandango, and reports those activities to the users' set of Facebook friends, unless told not to do so.
Despite its heralded retreat on the ad programs features, the tracking of user information seems to be much more invasive and intrusive than anyone knew, as discovered by Stefan Berteau, a senior research engineer. The article reports:

A Computer Associates security researcher is sounding the alarm that Facebook's controversial Beacon online ad system goes much further than anyone has imagined in tracking people's Web activities outside the popular social networking site.

Beacon will report back to Facebook on members' activities on third-party sites that participate in Beacon even if the users are logged off from Facebook and have declined having their activities broadcast to their Facebook friends.

* * * *

Of particular concern is that users aren't informed that data on their activities at these sites is flowing back to Facebook, nor given the option to block that information from being transmitted, Berteau said in an interview.

It seems like everyone just wants to get all of our information, any which way they can.

And in other Facebook news, the anti-Walmart, Target, got caught trying to hide it's marketing promotion on Facebook by student marketers. Target set up a new Facebook page and suggested that college students, called "Rounders," who receive discounts and prizes for marketing Target products, promote the new campaign without disclosing that they were part of the Target Rounders. Bloggers seeing red over Target's little secret. The retailer was exposed when one of the student Rounders questioned the ethics of keeping her role secret, as requested, and posted her concerns on-line, which caused a quick attempt at damage control by Target.

Once again, it's one step forward, two steps back.

(Facebook/Target story via Fergie's Tech Blog)

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