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As anyone who knows me can attest to – I like beer. Anyone who knows beer, knows that like revenge, it is best served cold.
I came across one the best examples of overkill in a technical project that I’ve ever seen – the Jet Powered Beer Cooler.
I thought I’d share this, as it’s an interesting project (a home-made jet engine) and one of the craziest applications of jet technology I’ve ever heard of.
It’s the online sensation that has swept the world – Facebook. Up until now, the data they have collected has been only what you provided them. Now with their new Beacon project, they’ve started to reach beyond the confines of their domain, and collect information that you may not have authorized them to.
It’s no secret to anyone who has read the privacy policy that Facebook is not just a social networking tool, but a method of collecting consumer data which is used for marketing purposes. That’s why it’s important not to put anything on their site that you wouldn’t want shared in this manner such as phone numbers, business email addresses and the like. Otherwise, it seems fairly benign, or at least it was until now.
Bought a product on a Beacon partner’s website? They tell Facebook, who adds a notification onto your feed. Sure, you can opt-out and delete the message – but Facebook still knows, and have been unresponsive to questions as to what happens to that data after you delete it from your feed. Is it really deleted, or merely hidden?
The plot thickens – not all of the Beacon partner sites are collecting just purchase information. Some are collecting information on your interests based on your browsing activities on their websites.
What all of this means is that Facebook is collecting personalized data on you that you didn’t explicitly give them. They are using it to aim targeted ads at you and your social circle – and quite likely they’re selling this marketing data to their partners.
A further questionable move on their part is that this new initiative is enabled by default for all users – you must edit your privacy configuration to opt-out of the program. The motivation behind this is fairly obvious – not too many people would likely go out of their way to add Beacon to their profile since it has no appeal to the end-user, only the advertisers.
Apparently some of the initial partners (such as Coke) are cooling to the idea and taking a wait-and-see-what-happens approach to Beacon. They claim they where led to believe it would be an opt-in program – but the cynic in me thinks that’s just PR spin to distance themselves from Facebook in case it crashes and burns.
All and all, I can honestly say – shame on you Mark Zuckerberg.
Edit: It's come to my attention that Facebook has partially reversed it's policy and allowed for a global opt-out, instead of a site-by-site opt-out... However you are in fact automatically added to Beacon services unless you ask to be removed.
To do that: Go to Privacy > External Websites and put a check in the box.
Computers and the Internet have revolutionized how we communicate and share. Messages can be sent nearly instantaneously. Entire songs can be reduced to small files and portable storage devices can hold thousands of them. Video is rapidly joining audio in compact portability.
Somehow the entertainment industry has fallen behind. They continue to attempt to enforce outdated copyright laws which where written and designed before current technology was even conceived.
Lets face it, the harder they try to control how things are shared online, the harder someone will work to subvert the system and do it anyways. Hollywood and the music industry should spend more time and money trying to conceive of a new business model that embraces the new capabilities of Internet technology. Instead they keep fighting a losing battle to preserve the current.
It just boggles my mind.
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