Facebook feature ‘beacon’ raises Privacy Fears

There has been a simmering discontent amongst the users of Facebook. Their concern is the ease and frequency with which their personal information is marketed in cyberspace.

Facebook claims that its users can choose to keep their purchases secret, or to limit the number of online friends to whom their purchases are disclosed.

At the centre of the controversy is the new feature Beacon. On November 7, 2007, Facebook announced a marketing initiative which includes a system for websites to allow users to share chosen information about their activities on the sites with their Facebook friends known as Facebook Beacon.

Facebook is a social networking website that allows people to communicate with their friends and exchange information. Launched on February 4, 2004, Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, a member of the Harvard class of 2006 and former Ardsley High School student.

MoveOn.org, an online political action group has launched an online petition calling on Facebook to apply Beacon only to users who have specifically opted in to the system. It has described the scheme (Beacon) as a "huge privacy violation".

"Facebook users across the nation are outraged that the books, movies and gifts they buy privately on other sites are being displayed without permission to lots of people. Facebook needs to reverse this massive privacy breach," said a spokesman for MoveOn.org.

Facebook rejected the claims and said that its users are given two chances to opt out of sending a Beacon alert to their friends. It claimed, "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 They also are given multiple ways to choose not to share information from a participating site, both on that site and on Facebook."

Facebook has the potential to really revolutionize how we live in the society. However, when the privacy is violated, it is not defensible. The social networking site needs to give users more power to control who views what.