Facebook Beacon Backlash, Leads To Apology & Opt-Out Option

Last month Facebook added Beacon, a new service that tracks Facebook members activities through partner websites, ie. purchasing a product, signing up for a service, and so on. The problem is that many people did not realize that their activity was not only being tracked, but posted to their Facebook News Feed. This resulted in a gargantuan backlash over privacy issues, causing several partner companies to withdraw from the service and even prompted some users to leave Facebook.

Today Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg posted an apology on the Facebook blog, which included information on how to opt-out of the service (here’s a screenshot).