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You wouldn'tthink it possible, but Facebook has managed to tie with the HM Revenue& Customs as the world's biggest online privacy villain this week.All Revenue & Customs managed to do was lose 25 million sets of taxpayer details. Pffft. Facebook has gone and ruined Christmas!
Accordingto advocacy group MoveOn, Facebook's new Project Beacon advertisingsystem is now exposing Facebook users' holiday wish lists. According to CNet's Caroline McCarthy,"MoveOn's campaign has cited problems with the program ranging from itspotential to reveal a user's entire holiday shopping list to thepossibility that it might expose sensitive information that could putsomeone at risk".
In other words, it's not just annoying. It's creepy. And thousandsof Facebook users are mightily peeved. As of this morning, 9,724Facebook users had signed up to a petition, launched on Facebook of course, demanding the super-popular social network change the system from opt-out to opt-in.
The argument over opt-in/opt-out can get tedious. For a refresher,privacy-conscious Europeans insist on opt-in online marketing schemes.Americans, already drowning in adverts, seem non-plussed about it andusually set their marketing missives to "annoying" and fire away, untilyou bug them to stop.
Facebook, of course, defends the program saying it only blasts theinformation to your network of friends, not to the wider webpopulation. This explanation isn't satisfying anyone.
As Henry Blodget's Silicon Alley Insider writes,"Facebook should immediately make Beacon 100 per cent opt-in. Notbecause MoveOn is complaining -- because the current system will driveusers right out the door. The tiny minority of Facebookers who want tobombard friends with lists of the crap they buy -- and friends who areactually interested in hearing about this - -can elect to do so. Thevast majority who don't should never have to hear about this ridiculousconcept again."
I concur. But first I want to see if any of my friends have bought me any good crap for Christmas.