Facebook's Beacon More Intrusive Than Previously Thought
A Computer Associates security researcher says that Facebook's 
controversial Beacon online ad system goes much further than expected in 
tracking people's Web activities.


A Computer Associates security researcher is sounding the alarm that 
Facebook's controversial Beacon online ad system goes much further than 
anyone has imagined in tracking people's Web activities outside the 
popular social networking site.

Beacon will report back to Facebook on members' activities on third-party 
sites that participate in Beacon even if the users are logged off from 
Facebook and have declined having their activities broadcast to their 
Facebook friends.

That's the finding published on Friday by Stefan Berteau, senior research 
engineer at CA's Threat Research Group in a note summarizing tests he 
conducted.

Of particular concern is that users aren't informed that data on their 
activities at these sites is flowing back to Facebook, nor given the 
option to block that information from being transmitted, Berteau said in 
an interview.

"It can happen completely without their knowledge, unless they are 
examining their network traffic at a very low level," Berteau said.