By Eamon Cullen

Amid user unrest, Facebook agreed last week to remove from its Web site Beacon, a program allowing users to see their friends’ purchases from online retailers.

Introduced in early November, Beacon allowed online companies to post a customer’s recent online purchases onto his or her Facebook news feed, in turn showing one’s entire network what he or she had recently bought online.

This automated system did not first ask for the buyer’s consent: It opened a pop-up window offering the shopper the ability to “hide” the purchase only if he or she clicked on it within the 20 seconds before the window disappeared.

Beacon was offered freely by Facebook to a number of online companies, about 40 of which decided to take up the service before it was disbanded, including the retailer Overstock.com and the movie ticket seller Fandango.com.

Problems became noticeable from early on, and people started to complain about invaded privacy issues.

Four weeks after its inception, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ended Beacon, issuing a lengthy apology to the community by way of his Facebook blog.

And this is not the first time Facebook has sparked concerns of privacy violation.

In his quest for achieving “freedom of information,” Zuckerberg has added a number of functions to the Web site, including last year’s news feed, which brought almost instantaneous clamor of Facebook’s invasion of privacy.

But instead of eliminating the news feed, Zuckerberg added new privacy filters to the program.

“People don’t necessarily like what’s being posted on (Facebook), but that’s why they give you the option to take it off,” said senior McClain Walker.

Vanderbilt students remain largely unaware the Beacon controversy ever took place, and now that it is gone, it is likely to end up completely forgotten.

“I (never knew) anything about it,” Walker said.

Not a single student asked had heard about the program.

—The Associated Press contributed reporting to this article.