Despite my confident laying of odds, Mark Zuckerberg has announced in a blog post that Facebook now is enabling us to opt out of the Beacon advertising system entirely.

That’s not perfect. It’s still not opt in. And info about your activity on third party sites is still being passed around, unencrypted; if you opt out FB ignores the info, but it’s still sent to them. Nevertheless, the announced change is enough to collect on that 100:1 bet I made.

Fortunately, I neglected to mention any stakes. Whew!

[Tags: facebook privacy marketing ]

Categories: digital rights, marketing