Ever since Facebook launched their Beacon program, there’s been a non-stop attack on it from journalists, bloggers, and even advocacy organizations like MoveOn.org. Facebook has been accused of invading privacy so much so that some are actually describing the publishing of Mark Zuckerberg’s college application and personal journal entries by 02138 Magazine as Zuckerberg getting a taste of his own medicine.

The fact is, the Beacon is designed to be an opt-in feature for Facebook users. If a user does not want to publish an event him/her triggered on a third-party website, they need not do so. In other words, activity is only published to a user’s feed if that user approves. Moreover, if users are sure they never want to do so, they can permanently opt-out.

It turns out, though, that Facebook is being a bit sneaky though in how the Beacon system is implemented. According to Stefan Berteau at CA, even if a user on a third-party site - via a Beacon - declines to publish an event to their Facebook feed, information about the event is still sent over to Facebook. Whether they are doing something with this info is unknown. My guess is it is being recorded. Gathering as much information about what a user’s recent activity is may well help predict/define what their near-term future intentions are. Such info is critical for ad targeting.

What is distinct about this privacy blowup at Facebook compared to the News Feed privacy blowup back in September ‘06 is that the Beacon is a much less visible feature. Beacons launched a month ago and a very small minority of users have actually seen it. Both because only a small percentage of Facebook users have used third-party websites that employ the beacon and because, as a result, few beacon-sourced news feed items have been created (and my guess is that even for those feed items that have been published, few users users viewing the feed clicked on it and realized it was an external link). As a result of this slow uptake, most users haven’t heard of the Beacons and those that do haven’t been personally affected by it. Those that have been prompted by a Beacon were pleased to see that it was opt-in: the user had full control.

The “spying” issue brought up by Stefan is simply not going to be important to the vast majority of users. Unless you’re a techie, you’re not even going to understand the technical details. More importantly, the truth is that most users have simply become used to the idea that companies are spying on them or, worse yet, simply do not care one iota. Heck, some percentage of users probably think such spying may be a good thing because it could mean that companies can offer them better service. Let’s not forget the insanely high number of people who have Google and Yahoo toolbars installed on their browser. The primary purpose of most browser toolbars and plugins is to track your browsing activity. Oh and don’t even get me started on the Doubleclick’s of the world. I cringe to think of how many tracking cookies from all the different ad networks that are sitting in my Firefox right now.

Ask a random sample of 10 your Facebook friends questions about privacy, beacons, tracking cookies, etc. The replies you’ll get back will be filled with ignorance and indifference. I’m not saying this is a good thing, but it’s a reality. This passive attitude towards personal privacy isn’t new either. Traditional companies have been tracking individual consumer behavior for decades and only until a person is directly inconvenienced or violated do they actually start to take interest in their privacy.

Perhaps Facebook’s mistake is not so much the Beacon program itself as their recent marketing blitz over SocialAds, which is all about whoring out user profile data to advertisers. It’s a concept that everyone new was coming but to a lot of people I’ve talked to, including myself, it does feel a bit like they’re exploiting the user. Yet, Google attaches ads to everything from your searches to your email and nobody cries foul. Maybe Facebook just needs to adopt a “Do No Evil” mantra to divert attention from their secret goal of beating out Google in becoming the Big Brother of the Web. =)