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Facebook Snoops on Shoppers
Do you want all your friends to know what you just bought online and how much you spent? Facebook has a new advertising feature called Beacon that lets other websites tell Facebook what you do online. For example, if you rent a movie from a website, that company will tell Facebook what you rented. When Facebook launched Beacon, it passed that information on to all your Facebook friends automatically. Not everyone thinks personal information should be shared like this. Critics say that Beacon, like spyware, denies users their right to privacy.
Last week, Mark Zuckerberg, who started Facebook, apologized and changed the way Beacon operates. In his blog he said that now users can opt in if they want to share this kind of information with their friends. But Beacon is still collecting information about what you do on the web unless you turn it off. That means that what you do online might not be private information. Companies like the way Beacon works because they want to know what you rent and buy. The more they know about what you do online, the more they can make advertisements that will convince you to buy their stuff. A smart shopper is an informed one -- find out whether Facebook is forwarding your purchases. Then, you can decide if you care to share!
I'm Isaac and that's what happened in the Arts this week!
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