Privacy fears over Facebook feature
simmering unease about threats to privacy from a new feature on Facebook is threatening to come to the boil, presenting the fast-growing social network with the first test of its unusual plans for making money from its site.
By automatically alerting a user's online network of friends to things bought on other websites, the feature can reveal highly personal information, critics say.
Facebook, however, says its users can choose to keep their purchases secret, or to limit the number of online friends to whom their purchases are disclosed.
Known as Beacon, the feature was one of several money-making ideas Facebook launched this month to try to turn its users' actions - such as their online purchases and their stated preferences for certain brands - into recommendations that might influence the buying habits of their friends.
Though it caused unease around the internet when first announced, the Beacon system has attracted a renewed burst of unwelcome attention in recent days thanks largely to the efforts of MoveOn.org, the online political action group.
The attention has been fuelled further by this week's Thanksgiving holiday, which marks the high point of the seasonal boom in online shopping.
MoveOn launched an online petition calling on Facebook to apply Beacon only to users who have specifically opted in to the system. At present, Facebook says its users are given two chances to opt out of sending a Beacon alert to their friends - when making a purchase on a website that uses the system, and again on Facebook itself.
However, some online shoppers have complained that these warnings have not always been given, or that they are easy to miss.
One analyst, Charlene Li at Forrester, reported that her husband's purchase of a coffee table on Overstock.com had been reported to her own network of Facebook friends, since the computer they shared could not tell which of them had made the purchase. Also, no warning had been given by Overstock, she said.
"The biggest problem is the lack of transparency," Ms Li wrote on her blog. "There's a fine line that gets crossed when behaviour data slips from being a convenience to being Big Brother. This is one of those times."
Facebook faced similar unease more than a year ago when it launched a feature, known as Newsfeed, that alerts friends to everything a user does on the site.
The social networking site responded by giving users more power to limit the items that appear on the Newsfeed, and the ability to restrict who can see it.
Since then, the feature has become one of the site's most popular.
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Facebook Social network service
A social network service focuses on the building and verifying of online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, and which necessitates the use of software.
Most social network services are primarily web based and provide a collection of various ways for users to interact, such as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, discussion groups, and so on.
The main types of social networking services are those which contain directories of some categories (such as former classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages), and recommender systems linked to trust. Popular methods now combine many of these, with MySpace, Bebo and Facebook being the mostly widely used in the anglosphere.[1][2]
There have been some attempts to standardize them (see the FOAF standard) but this has led to some privacy concerns.
Facebook Users Complain of New Tracking
NEW YORK - Some users of the online hangout Facebook are complaining that its two-week-old marketing program is publicizing their purchases for friends to see.
Those users say they never noticed a small box that appears on a corner of their Web browsers following transactions at Fandango, Overstock and other online retailers. The box alerts users that information is about to be shared with Facebook unless they click on "No Thanks." It disappears after about 20 seconds, after which consent is assumed.
Users are given a second notice the next time they log on to Facebook, but they can easily miss it if they quickly click away to visit a friend's page or check e-mail.
"People should be given much more of a notice, much more of an alert," said Matthew Helfgott, 20, a college student who discovered his girlfriend just bought him black leather gloves from Overstock for Hanukkah. "She said she had no idea (information would be shared). She said it invaded her privacy."
The girlfriend was declining interviews, Helfgott said.
An Overstock.com Inc. spokesman said no one was immediately available for comment Wednesday.
Facebook has long prided itself on guarding its users' privacy, but the walls have gradually lowered. In 2006, a "news feeds" feature allowing users to track changes friends make to profiles backfired when many users denounced it as stalking and threatened protests. Facebook quickly apologized and agreed to let users turn off the feature.
The new program lets companies tap ongoing conversations by alerting users about friends' activities through the feeds. About 40 Web sites have decided to embed a free tool from Facebook, known as a Beacon, to enable the marketing feeds.
The idea is that if users see a friend buy or do something, they'd take that action as an endorsement for a movie, a band or a soft drink.
But it also raises privacy concerns.
Mike Mayer, for instance, saw a feed item saying his boyfriend, Adam Sofen, just bought tickets to "No Country For Old Men" from movie-ticket vendor Fandango.
"What if I was seeing 'Fred Claus'?" said Sofen, 28. "That would have been much more embarrassing. At least this was a prestigious movie."
In some cases, companies can buy an ad next to the feed item with the friend's photo. Although Fandango didn't do that, Mayer, 28, still found Beacon unsettling.
"If my identity is going to be used to promote something for someone else, that seems problematic," said Mayer, who was previously employed in online advertising. "It could be a misrepresentation of my purchases."
Fandango officials referred inquiries to Facebook, which issued a statement defending its practices. Facebook officials have also said advertising supports the free service.
"Beacon gives users an easy way to share relevant information from other sites with their friends on Facebook," the statement said. "Information is shared with a small selection of a user's trusted network of friends, not publicly on the Web or with all Facebook users. Users also are given multiple ways to choose not to share information from a participating site, both on that site and on Facebook."
Users are able to decline sharing on a site-by-site basis, but can't withdraw from the program entirely.
On Wednesday, Facebook launched a mechanism for users to indicate what types of news feeds they like and dislike. Individuals could possibly use that to lower the frequency of marketing items, though the company has said they won't be able to reject them completely.
Liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org formed a protest group Tuesday and had more than 6,000 members by Wednesday. The group is calling on Facebook to stop revealing online purchases and letting companies use names for endorsements without "explicit permission."
"We want Facebook to realize that their users are rightly concerned that private information is being made public," MoveOn spokesman Adam Green said, adding that Facebook could quell concerns by seeking "opt in" consent rather than leaving it to users to "opt out" by taking steps to decline sharing.
Facebook user Nate Weiner, 23, said he uses a tool for the Firefox Web browser called BlockSite, which he says prevents sites from sending data to Facebook.
"What if you bought a book on Amazon called 'Coping with AIDS' and that got published to every single one of your friends?" he said.
TODAY ON PHILLY.COM
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