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November 29, 2007

I'm avoiding sites that use Facebook Beacon -- how to block it with a Firefox extension

The law of unintended consequences: I find myself avoiding Overstock.com (advertisers take note) because of the Facebook Beacon ads, even though I'm entirely passive at Facebook, just watching it, never inviting anyone.

(Added later: I accept invitations from people I have connected with, on line or off. But some people I don't know have asked me to be their friend; perhaps which just baffles me. Perhaps that is in our future. These invites don't seem to expire.)

No one on my Christmas list is a "friend." I just find it creepy that my activity on the web is tracked and published without my consent.

Earlier in the month, Download Squad and other sites passed on Nate Weiner's (The Idea Shower) discovery of a way to block the ads. This should be better known outside deep geek circles:

How to block Facebook Beacon - Download Squad

Fortunately Nate Weiner figured out an extraordinarily simple solution (for Firefox users). Just install the BlockSite Firefox add-on and block Facebook Beacon.

The steps:

1. Get Firefox
2. Download and Install the BlockSite plugin for Firefox.
3. After restarting Firefox select ‘Add-ons’ from the Tools menu.
4. Click the ‘Options’ button on the BlockSite extension
5. Click the ‘Add’ button
6. Enter http://*facebook.com/beacon/* into the input box
7. Click ‘OK’
8. Click ‘OK’ again and you are good to go.

The principle:

If you look at the javascript that is used to make requests to Facebook, you will see that the requests are made to http://www.facebook.com/beacon/beacon.js.php so by blocking just the beacon folder, you are preventing the site from sending requests to Facebook without blocking the rest of Facebook.

By using the asterisk in the URL you block variations with and without the "www."

Here's what happened to Nate that started all this: Block Facebook Beacon

While he played at online game site Kongregate, Nate found this popping into his Facebook profile:

Kongregate CEO Jim Greer wrote the first comment on this post:

Hi Nate -
I understand how you feel about this - we’re going to add an account setting for Kongregate to ‘never show’ the Facebook beacon. If this is checked we won’t make the javascript call and Facebook won’t get any data.

- Jim Greer
CEO, Kongregate

Comments on both sites are interesting and worth a look.

Posted by Sheila Lennon at 7:20 AM | Permalink

Comments

I notice in reading the comments on Nate's site that someone else objected to random sites demanding personal info like our birthdates. It has always annoyed me that one of our local banks, for example, wants answer to numerous personal questions as part of their security. It is none of their business what high school I went to or what my first boyfriend's name was, and so on, so I always lie to sites like this, making up random information.

This, of course, means that when they wipe out my pc's validation, as they do periodically for unknown reasons, I am unable to convince the Citizens phone reps, despite supplying my SS number, birth date, and other normal financial info to let me back in. They have finally succeeded, in their quest to keep out fraudulent users, in making it nearly impossible for valid users to use their site.

No surprise when my CD matures I am moving to a different bank.

Posted by: janet on November 29, 2007 6:57 PM

Janet, you've got me wondering which bank has the most user-friendly software. A few years ago I tried to make two months mortgage payments at once, one in advance. Without informing me, the software choked, applied both payments to principle and charged me a late fee for missing the first monthly payment. I filed a bug report and they patched the software, but no one can get rid of that phantom $10 late charge. It's been riding along with me for years, although the software takes normal payments without considering them "short." At the branch, a banker assured me it will all be rectified when I finally pay off the mortgage some decades from now.

I agree about the phony personas -- hard to keep them straight. Now I try to stick to things like "mother's maiden name" that are public record anyway.

As for this Facebook fiasco, it's hard to believe that none of the multimillionaire geniuses there foresaw trouble in publishing what users purchase just before Christmas.

Posted by: Sheila on November 30, 2007 10:26 AM