I’ve been largely offline for the last three weeks, which is why I was very confused when I came back to see various folks talking about FaceBook Beacon. I’m on Facebook, but I’m contemplating getting off, because I was told they claim publishing rights to everything you have on your Facebook account–including “Notes”, which are imports of your blog writing. Not that my blog writing is going to change the world or anything, but I’ll keep my own publishing rights for my work, thank you.

Anyway, what is Beacon?

It collects data on the behavior of Facebook users on several commercial websites such as eBay, Fandango, Zappos and Overstock.com. [1] When a Facebook user purchases an item at one of these websites, Facebook provides a way for the user to advertise their purchase on their Facebook News Feed.[2] While users can decline sending out the advertising, Facebook does not allow users to opt out of the data collection and behavior monitoring.[3][4] Even if you opt out, click “no thanks”, and log out of Facebook, Beacon will still be surreptitiously collecting your web browsing behavior data and sending it to Facebook. [5][6]

Yeah, that’s what I want! Some kid watching what I buy on eBay for advertising purposes. Kiss my right cheek, Facebook.

Anyway, thanks to Nathan at CompassionInPolitics we have handy instructions for how to block Facebook Beacon on Firefox. (As one would expect from Microsoft, it is currently impossible to block Facebook on IE. No word on Safari, which is disappointing as well.)

Other bloggers talking about Beacon:
Rex Hammock
Jack Lail
lcreekmo