Ok, I had pretty much ignored the whole Facebook Beacon privacy controversy that’s been going on over the past few weeks. I kept seeing references to something, and just didn’t get interested enough to find out what was going on. And now it’s too late. No, wait, not too late. Just in time.
So I add something to my queue on Blockbuster Online. I wasn’t expecting to get a little DHTML-ish window sliding in at the bottom of the screen saying that they were letting all of my friends know what movie I just added to my queue. Really? Is that something that people really want?
I know Blockbuster was tying themselves in with Facebook, since on several occasions over the last few weeks they’ve asked me to link my Blockbuster and Facebook accounts for all kinds of nifty cool features. No thanks.
But now Blockbuster is automatically sending Facebook my queue information, even though I never linked the accounts? I guess just because that Firefox profile had a valid Facebook login cookie, Facebook’s Beacon javascript was able to submit the update anyway? Why were they asking me if I wanted to link the accounts in the first place, then? And they want to spread this to as many web sites as they can? I wouldn’t mind if the user controls over Beacon that apparently used to be available were actually still available, but they aren’t.
So I decided that the easiest solution — at least for now, I have a feeling they’re going to give in to Interweb outrage soon enough — was to block them.
Luckily, blocking Beacon can’t be much easier. I already have AdBlock Plus installed in Firefox, just because it makes web browsing a more pleasant experience. I try not to just go wild and block everything; I have nothing against sites making money from my impressions. But large ugly ads, or heavy Flash ads that slow everything down? You’re getting blocked.
Want to add Facebook Beacon to that? Go to your AdBlock preferences and add a block for http://*facebook.com/beacon/*
I tested it, adding another movie to my Blockbuster queue, and AdBlock dutifully stopped it. It’s not like Blockbuster’s queue management page needed to be any slower, and adding an extra block of Javascript to that page can’t help.