BEIJING, Dec. 6 (Xinhuanet)-- Facebook said on Wednesday that users will be able to turn off a controversial feature that monitors the Web sites they visit, but criticism is still intense for the Fackbook's recent behaviour.

    In a note in his blog, the Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the online social network took too long to react to users' concerns about the "Facebook Beacon" feature, which tracks the actions of its members when they use other sites around the Internet.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco, California, Oct. 17, 2007. Facebook said on Wednesday it will allow members to turn off a controversial feature that monitors the Web sites they visit, and its chief executive apologized for not responding sooner to privacy complaints.(Xinhua Photo) Photo Gallery>>>

    "We've made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we've made even more with how we've handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it," Zuckerberg wrote.

    Although Facebook has now made the changes, privacy groups are still working on a complaint to U.S. federal regulators about Facebook's advertising program. 

    Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said Zuckerberg should have explained Facebook's full advertising and data collection program to users in his blog.

    "The user needs to decide how their information is going to be used, whether it's going to be used for targeting at all, which advertisers have access to it and whether Facebook has the right to collect and analyze it," he said. "Facebook is saying it is a safe place for you to share your innermost secrets; what's not being told to users is that they are selling those secrets."

    Furthermore, some users said they felt the company had not been forthcoming with its members.

    "I feel like my trust in Facebook has been violated," said Christopher Lynn, 30, a Facebook user who also writes a blog on social media. "Facebook created this space that was a private space, where we share our experiences, and to share this data behind our backs is upsetting."

    In his blog posting, Zuckerberg said "If you select that you don't want to share some Beacon actions or if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won't store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook."

    That would seem to indicate that Beacon will continue to track users and send data back to Facebook, leaving it up to Facebook to decide which data it keeps and which it deletes.

    In addition to Beacon, the company's new ad platform includes profile pages created by advertisers and ads sent to users based on what they write about in their profiles.

    The idea of Beacon is to generate advertising that is more effective because it is intricately combined with people's social circle, so that products and services are promoted in a more organic way via the actions of friends and family.

(Agencies)