Facebook faces class-action suit over Beacon
A class-action suit filed in California charges Facebook and a handful of other companies, including Blockbuster, Fandango and Overstock, with violating online privacy and computer fraud laws related to Facebook's controversial Beacon system.
Beacon is a program designed by Facebook that shares information about Facebook users' Internet activities with friends. When a Facebook user who has Beacon turned on buys an item on Overstock.com, for example, a message appears on their Facebook page about the purchase, so that all the user's friends can see the message.
But Beacon came under fire from the start from privacy advocates, some of whom wondered how much information Facebook was gathering about how many Internet users.
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I heard mention that the Chrome OS will have some sort of encryption available a la bitlocker. If it's possible to encrypt personal data using another password or key, then it may have potential for very secure data.... And Ubuntu has an 'encrypt home directory' option, perhaps google should follow suit.
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