Facebook’s recently launched it’s new advertising campaign called “Beacon”.
What it is is a reporting system that can be used on websites so that they can promote themselves to Facebook users. This is great, except who really wants to be tracked by Facebook while they browse the web? Now, they do have privacy settings so that you can keep things from showing up in your profile, but even then, your actions are still being reported by these websites to Facebook and potentially being used for advertisement stuff, etc.
While I’m not trying to sound paranoid, and I usually stand up for Facebook when people are like “It’s turning into MySpace, etc”, this still goes beyond what I want it to do.
So, I found a way to block it, thanks to this post by Nate over at The Idea Shower
Using Firefox:
- Download and Install the BlockSite plugin for Firefox.
- After restarting Firefox select ‘Add-ons’ from the Tools menu.
- Click the ‘Options’ button on the BlockSite extension
- Click the ‘Add’ button
- Enter http://www.facebook.com/beacon/* into the input box
- Click ‘OK’
- Click ‘OK’ again and you are good to go.
Using IE:
Go use Firefox… it’s better and more secure and is standards compliant (which makes my life easier when coding webpages)… I site the picture from my previous post as proof.
Should you find a way to block it, email me at mwoodru(at)gmail.com with instructions or a link
Using anything else:
Should you find a way to block it on any other browsers, email me at mwoodru(at)gmail.com with instructions or a link. (Though you really should use Firefox)
For more info, read the press release by Facebook and check out the Facebook Beacon Page