Exposed! Facebook outrivals HMRC as privacy villain

You wouldn't think 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! 

According to advocacy group MoveOn, Facebook's new Project Beacon advertising system 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 its potential to reveal a user's entire holiday shopping list to the possibility that it might expose sensitive information that could put someone at risk".

In other words, it's not just annoying. It's creepy. And thousands of Facebook users are mightily peeved. As of this morning, 9,724 Facebook 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 and usually set their marketing missives to "annoying" and fire away, until you bug them to stop.

Facebook, of course, defends the program saying it only blasts the information to your network of friends, not to the wider web population. This explanation isn't satisfying anyone.

As Henry Blodget's Silicon Alley Insider writes, "Facebook should immediately make Beacon 100 per cent opt-in. Not because MoveOn is complaining -- because the current system will drive users right out the door. The tiny minority of Facebookers who want to bombard friends with lists of the crap they buy -- and friends who are actually interested in hearing about this - -can elect to do so. The vast majority who don't should never have to hear about this ridiculous concept again."

I concur. But first I want to see if any of my friends have bought me any good crap for Christmas.