Facebook’s policies need to be clearer

To some extent, the price of admission to our increasingly seamless Internet experience is the willingness to let down our guard. "Cookies," those bits of code a site will drop remotely into our Web browsers, allow for conveniences. Just to name one: Your ID and password suddenly appear next time you visit a favorite site, relieving you of the need to recall yet another sign-on routine.

So computer cookies aren’t all evil, but a legal storm is brewing over a particular kind, a "tracking" cookie, one that’s deposited by one site but that then persists, even when the Web surfer logs out and meanders to other virtual locales.

In particular, people are starting to chafe at what they say is an unwarranted intrusion into their privacy by Facebook, the social- media network that ranks as one of the highest-traffic stops on the Net. And it appears that the American court system is about to prove its worth by finally forcing a confrontation over a pervasive problem with the social media network, a problem about transparency, above all.

Last week, Hawaii entered the fray. Margery Bronster, the former state attorney general, is representing plaintiff Cynthia D. Quinn in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court. The aim of this case — like others being litigated in states including Kentucky, California and Louisiana — is to be elevated to the status of a class-action lawsuit, pursued on behalf of Facebook users as a group.

Facebook is certainly not alone in using such trackers — they’re part of what enables the "push ads" that many Web-based businesses direct to certain users because of their location or interests.

What some find particularly galling about Facebook is that omnipresent features, such as its "Like" button, have enabled personal information to be shared to a greater extent than most people realize. And this even includes the few who’ve managed to scan through its lengthy privacy disclosure documents, which in the end don’t disclose clearly enough what information is being shared, or with whom.

To get a sense of what can happen, there’s a mini-tour offered by PCMag.com, an explainer titled "When Facebook Gets Creepy." Use the site’s shortened link: bit.ly/qllXaf (those are two small L’s in the last cluster of letters).

For its part, Facebook has moved to make the cookies inert once a member logs out, and its representatives have denied the company uses the cookies to follow people. Instead, according to one statement, the little programs help the site to personalize content, such as showing what your friends liked; to gauge effectiveness of content by measuring the click-through rate; and to help maintain safety and security by keeping underage kids out).

Perfect understanding of all this is rare outside the techie inner circles, which thankfully include people able to penetrate the workings of Facebook, people who helped to shine a light on the issue.

Whether or not the invasiveness is intentional may be an issue for litigators to work out, but to most people it’s a side issue. Even if the little-understood consequences of its setup are unintentional, Web users are largely being misled. Preferably, Facebook would voluntarily do more to be up front with users about how it works. Failing that, it’s a matter the judicial system needs to settle.