• August 14, 2008

Nineteen Facebook members have filed a lawsuit against the company for allegedly violating their privacy with the Beacon ad program, which informed users about their friends' e-commerce activity. The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in San Jose, Calif., alleges that the Beacon program violated various federal and California laws regulating privacy and computer crime.

The lawsuit, filed as a class-action, also named the marketers that participated in the program as defendants, including Blockbuster, Fandango, Hotwire, STA Travel, Overstock.com, Zappos.com and Gamefly.

When Facebook launched Beacon last November, the program operated by default unless members opted out. The plaintiffs allege that the opt-out mechanism did not adequately protect their privacy. "It was inadequate because, on most Facebook Beacon Activated Affiliate websites, where it was operational at all, it was only available as a quick pop-up for approximately 10 seconds or even less, and if a user missed it, misunderstood it, had another window browser open, or even looked in the wrong direction when it was momentarily available, such actions and a host of other similar non-consensual occurrences were all interpreted as and defaulted to 'consent,'" the lawsuit alleges.

In early December, Facebook revamped the program so that members had to explicitly consent to sharing information about their off-site activity.

--Wendy Davis