It's not anything new to hear that our privacy and personal information can be invaded easily through the medium that is Facebook, but it's always good to know what the various causes of these invasions are so as to reduce any harmful outcomes. Well, the Wall Street Journal has investigated Facebook apps – in particular the highly addictive Farmville - and are saying that various apps are revealing Facebook ID information, which is grabbed by advertisers and various companies and used to sell their products at you.
The leak of your Facebook ID supposedly affects almost every user, even those who have their privacy settings put to their tightest. This breaks Facebook rules, where information from locked pages should not be able to get into other areas of Facebook. Facebook have admitted that "A Facebook user ID may inadvertently be shared by a user's browser or by an application"¦that does not permit access to anyone's private information on Facebook." Although Facebook are trying to sort out the issue, apps still remain a big problem when it comes to personal information and privacy.
The Facebook ID is a public part (it cant be made private) of all profiles. It is used to look up someone just by typing it into an address bar of a web browser, which then allows owners off the ID to find out more information on the person, making it simple to advertise certain products towards them.
The WSJ investigation pointed out the worst culprits for exposing this kind of information were Zynga's Farmville and Frontierville games, who are not only able to give away the information of people who play their games, but also those people's friends (so you may have tragically been exposed without knowing it). WSJ also discovered that one firm (RapLeaf) has Facebook ID info in it's databases and selling it to advertisers (which RapLeaf claim was unintentional).
In an attempt to redeem themselves, a Zynga spokesperson said, "Zynga has a strict policy of not passing personally identifiable information to any third parties. We look forward to working with Facebook to refine how web technologies work to keep people in control of their information."
If you're worried about your personal and private information getting out, always make sure you're careful with what apps you use and make sure to keep settings regarding your information tight. If you've faced any other Facebook privacy problems let us know in the comments below.
Via: Electric Pig