Facebook apologizes for the privacy disaster known as Beacon
By Sean P. Aune
The privacy-raiding advertising beast known as “Beacon”, is dead… kinda.
After what seems like an eternity, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has popped out of seeming seclusion, and admits that Beacon was “a bad job”. He also admits that they took to long to react when complaints started coming in from users.
Beacon still exists, but has now been retooled that you can choose which sites you will allow to collect your data and send it back to Facebook. You also have the option for a global opt-out, meaning none of the participating sites will track your data.
The mea culpa is sufficient, and the ability to finally turn off the Big Brother-esque utility has finally come. One has to ponder why it took Facebook so long to decide on their course of action and just accept that they had messed up. No one outside of their corporate office will probably ever know, but one can certainly hope they have learned a lesson in how not to launch a new “feature”.
Related:
Stumble It!
Entry was posted
on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
under 
Print This Post
Read more entries by Sean P. Aune.
