Last fall, when the calamities of Facebook’s Beacon program became public, I was pissed. The fact that Beacon partners would capture and then share with Facebook an individual’s personal, private purchases and make them public without the individual’s prior knowledge let alone consent was one of the most egregious forms of legal online privacy violations that I had ever heard of. While they have improved their privacy options, Facebook still pulled a fast one. Instead of asking for permission first, they went right ahead and committed a foul and then apologized…and only moved a quarter of the way back in the correct direction.
Well, with any luck, they’ve been moved back a little further. Thanks to MyDataIsMyData.org and our client Flugpo.com, and, frankly, the folks here at Abraham Harrison, a new plug is being developed - it’s in beta phase right now - to combat the intrusiveness of Beacon.
Here’s a link for more information.
The plug-in is free and it is essentially a “Beacon cookie deleter” that gives people all sorts of options (I love that word) as to what to delete. Facebook cookies, Facebook Beacon partner’s cookies, or any other type of cookie for that matter. It will also notify you when you make a visit to a Beacon partner. That’s important, because what we don’t know may come back to hurt us.
This free plug-in (found at MyDataIsMyData.org)is a toolbar that will allow users several different options to monitor and delete cookies, offline content, and track visits to Facebook Beacon collaborator companies. Once downloaded, the toolbar allows users to decide how often he or she would like certain cookies deleted. The user can choose to delete Facebook cookies and Facebook Beacon collaborator companies’ cookies. It also includes the option to delete all cookies at once or none at all.
Flugpo. an Abraham Harrison client, is an online social network in itself. It describes itself as a cross between MySpace and CraigsList. It features user profiles, yet it has a significant “classified” capability where people can buy and sell things or list jobs.
Mashable wrote up a piece about it yesterday.:
While there are already a number of privacy options inserted into Facebook, and even more services out there that will rid you of cookie problems all together, Facebook Beacon’s mainstream press presence in itself may help My Data is My Data gain a good amount of users based on principle alone.
As did TechCrunch:
The MyDataIsMyData plug-in notifies users via their browser toolbar when Facebook or one of Beacon’s participating affiliates creates or accesses these cookies. The plug-in can automatically delete these cookies at regular intervals, and also allows for users to individually select which (if any) sites will still function with Beacon. Finally, the toolbar will feature a constantly-updated list of sites that participate in Beacon, allowing users to boycott them, should they choose to do so. MyDataIsMyData will soon be available for Internet Exporer, and plans to expand to offer functionality for both Firefox and Macintosh-based browsers.
If you think this isn’t needed, I’ll come back and say that the MyDataisMyData plugin gives people more control…a very good thing. And if there are other options out there that may do some things similar, who is to say that another option is not needed? Let the virtual marketplace decide.
Suddenly, I’m not as pissed as I used to be about Facebook Beacon.
TechCrunch
1 Comment » Posted on April 11th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn
Before we started working with 
Loading ...