Settling a year-long class action lawsuit, Facebook has finally decided to shutter its contentious Beacon advertising program, which has been drawing the wrath of privacy advocates ever since its late 2007 roll out!

Alleging that Facebook had failed to provide satisfactory information and privacy controls to users with regard to Beacon, the August 2008 lawsuit, filed on behalf of 20 Texas-based plaintiffs, had named Facebook and its Beacon participants as the defendants.

Beacon essentially tracked and recorded consumer activities, like buying a product or signing up for a company's service. The activities of the users were recorded on other sites, and later relayed back to the user's friends.

Going by the lawsuit, Facebook started tracking users' actions even prior to gaining their permission to post that information on their profiles, and, by the time the users became aware of the practice, "personally identifying information had already been communicated to Facebook."

Later, when Facebook turned Beacon into an "opt-in" system, enabling users to actively choose to participate in the program, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: "We've made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we've made even more with how we've handled them." 

Meanwhile, the settlement, yet to be approved by a judge, also includes a $9.5 million "settlement fund" to cater to the finances pertaining to "projects and initiatives that promote the cause of online privacy, safety, and security."