p2pnet news | Freedom:- With Facebook’s Beacon recent privacy invasion debacle hovering in the background, the site, “plans to roll out new privacy features on Wednesday that will give users more control over who sees the data stored on their profile pages,” says the IDG News Service.

“The new privacy controls will allow users to choose which of their friends can see information such as their photo albums, mobile phone number or e-mail address,” says the story.

“Facebook users will also be able to share information about themselves with a wider group of people, thanks to a new ‘friends-of-friends’ feature’ that is also expected to be available on Wednesday.”

Beacon was designed to track Facebook users around the Net so info on where they went and what they did could be used for targeted advertising.

But, “It’s mine,” Sir Tim Berners-Lee, father of the World Wide Web, declares of personal data.

“You can’t have it. If you want to use it for something, then you have to negotiate with me. I have to agree, I have to understand what I’m getting in return.”

He was speaking of the Phorm scandal.

Meanwhile, the new Facebook features don’t have any relationship to Beacon, says IDG.

But Matt Cohler, VP of product management, admitted, “With Beacon we just screwed it up. It was just poor execution on our part.”

They screwed up because the Facebook management thought users would be dumb enough to swallow Net tracking without protest. They were wrong, however.

Cohler also said Facebook will roll out its own Web-based chat software in the coming weeks, says IDG, adding:

“The company demoed a very simple chat client that could be used to connect with other Facebook users, so long as they are logged into the Facebook Web site. Chat conversations will be archived for 90 days, although users will have the option of erasing them.

The story doesn’t say what’ll happen to data which aren’t deleted.

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Also See:
privacy invasion debacle - Facebook Beacon also tracks non-users, December 5, 2007
IDG News Service - Facebook Beefs Up Privacy Options, Readies Online Chat, March 19, 2008
negotiate with me - BadPhorm, Phorm protest site, online, March 18, 2008
Phorm scandal - Phorm Pharce - FIPR open letter, March 17, 2008
They were wrong - Coca-Cola says NO! to Facebook Beacon, December 4, 2007

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 6:47 am and is filed under Freedom, P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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