Facebook backs down on site tracking after privacy backlash

 

Gallery

By Reuters

Posted on 30 Nov 2007 at 08:44

Facebook has scaled back a web monitoring feature that notifies users' friends when they visit affiliated websites, following mounting privacy protests.

The social networking sites says it's making several changes to a recently introduced feature called "Facebook Beacon", in the wake of a petition signed by 50,000 Facebook users.

Click here to join PC Pro on Facebook.

The changes announced by Facebook promise to give users improved controls over what information about their web activity is broadcast to friends.

The protest was started by online activist group MoveOn.org, which set up a petition calling on Facebook to give users a simple way to opt out of Beacon.

There have been several other protests, including a petition group in the Facebook site itself called "Facebook, stop invading my privacy."

Facebook has exploded in popularity since May, when it opened up to let independent software develops build their own applications on the site. It has grown by nearly fivefold to 55 million users in a year.

Recently, the company introduced Beacon as a way to keep one's network of friends on Facebook informed about one's own web surfing habits. Critics argued this transformed Facebook from a members-only site known for privacy protections into a diary of one's wider web activities.

The petition relayed the anecdote of a "Matt in New York" who, it said, already knew what his girlfriend had purchased him for Christmas because the Facebook Beacon feature had broadcast where his girlfriend had gone shopping online.

"Why?" the petition asked. "Because a new Facebook feature automatically shares books, movies, or gifts you buy online with everyone you know on Facebook."

The protest was far from a rejection of Facebook. "A lot of us love Facebook - it's helping to revolutionise the way we connect with each other. But it (the company) needs to take privacy seriously," the petition pleaded.

It was the second major privacy protest by Facebook members that has led the site to back off from new features. In September 2006, a university student-led protest attracted more than 700,000 signatories to a petition to improve privacy features inside the Facebook site itself.