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Facebook App Exposes Abject Insecurity

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the pay-no-attention-to-the-hole-in-my-pants dept.

ewhac writes "Back in June, the American Civil Liberties Union published an article describing Facebook's complete lack of meaningful security on your and your friends' information. The article went virtually unnoticed. Now, a developer has written a Facebook 'Quiz' based on the original article that graphically illustrates all the information a Facebook app can get its grubby little hands on by recursively sweeping through your friends list, pulling all their info and posts, and showing it to you. What's more, apps can get at your information even if you never run the app yourself. Facebook apps run with the access privileges of the user running it, so anything your friend can see, the app they're running can see, too. It is unclear whether the developer of the Facebook app did so 'officially' for the ACLU."

2 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. Yes, ordinary people are stupid regarding privacy by RIpRapRob · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But here is what Facebook tells their users:

    Facebook Principles

    ...

    We understand you may not want everyone in the world to have the information you share on Facebook; that is why we give you control of your information.

    ...

    Facebook follows two core principles:

    1. You should have control over your personal information.

    Yeah, there is a lot of 'small print' too, but why wouldn't the average user expect the information they put on Facebook to be private, unless they change some (default) setting?

  2. Re:Really? by Seumas · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually, facebook is very misleading in this way. There ARE options to make each element of your information *ONLY* available to friends. Or even to nobody.

    Unfortunately, their Facebook Application API directly violates the spirit of that by making it available to people other than your friends.

    The single most awful thing about facebook is the wealth of Applications. They're all crap and at best they're annoying. Every time I see some jack ass wasting my time (because it posts that they are using an app to my information stream) doing another "what kind of dog turd are you?" quiz, it makes me hate humanity just a little bit more.