Facebook has added a new advertising program called ‘beacon‘ that forces you to opt out for each website that you use that is participating, which for some people could be a lot. Why is this a problem? Trouble is, even if you opt out, what you’re opting out of is having that site place info in your feed. You’re NOT able to tell facebook, “Never collect this info from sites that I use,” from within facebook. Since ‘this info’ could be anything from online games you’ve played to purchases you’ve made, this strikes me as very much not okay.

Now to the good news: currently beacon is some dumb javascript that talks to *.facebook.com/beacon/* and can therefore be blocked with a firefox plugin. Note that if the link in the last sentence didn’t work for you, try again every couple of minutes. I think they’re getting hit hard and they’re just dropping n connection attempts per second. I’m copying the meat of it here so you don’t have to bother if you don’t want to:

1. Get Firefox
2. Download and Install the BlockSite plugin for Firefox. [<3 firefox extensions]
3. After restarting Firefox select ‘Add-ons’ from the Tools menu.
4. Click the ‘[preferences]’ button on the BlockSite extension.
5. Click the ‘Add’ button
6. Enter http://*facebook.com/beacon/* into the input box.
7. Click ‘OK’

Enjoy!

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