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How closely do you read the privacy notice of various sites that you use online, especially social networking sites? For Facebook users, they became part of a program called Beacon that published the users actions on other sites to their Facebook profile. To do this, Facebook was gathering data on the activity of its users both on and off the Facebook site. How this data was used both publicly and privately became the focus of a class action lawsuit designed to shut down the Facebook Beacon service and raise awareness about tracking users’ behavior online.
The privacy concern of this service centered around the ability to opt-out of the data. If, for example, you purchased an item but chose to not display that purchase on your profile, did the Facebook software store your purchase anyway? Were users properly notified of the information collected and how it would be used? Was the opt-out procedure clear and available to all users? If you opted-out of the program entirely, did it still store your information as a Facebook user?
This lawsuit serves as a reminder to all of us to carefully read and review privacy notices of the services we choose to use online. While you are reading a particular policy, you may want to consider:
- What information does this site collect from me?
- How is this information used?
- Is my data collected anonymously, or is identifying information attached to it?
- How is this information stored?
- Is this information shared or sold to anyone other than the originating site?
- Can I opt-out of the program and not have my information collected?
- If I decide to later delete my account, is my information kept or deleted?
Note: The Facebook Beacon has recently been discontinued, but the class action lawsuit continues. For more information, see the website at Lane et al. v. Facebook, Inc et al. Class Action Lawsuit.
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