Date: 12-06-2007
Facebook's controversial Beacon Program is facing even more trouble. An investigation by a Computer Associates' (CA) research team indicates that this program not only tracks the activities of Facebook users on partner sites even when they are not logged in, but also reports back to Facebook on activity by non-Facebook users. "Facebook is collecting information about user actions on affiliate sites regardless of whether or not the user chose to opt out, and regardless of whether or not the user is logged into Facebook at that time," reported CA senior research engineer Stefan Berteau in a blog post. In response to an outcry from Moveon.org as well as individual users, Facebook tweaked Beacon last week to make its workings more explicit to Facebook users, to make it easier to nix a broadcast message, and to opt out of having activities tracked on specific websites, however, Facebook didn't go all the way to providing a general opt-out option for the entire Beacon program, as some had hoped, according to PC World.
