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Top Facebook Apps Violate Privacy Terms
cgriffin21 writes "No stranger to privacy concerns, Facebook is once again in the privacy spotlight, following a Wall Street Journal report that some popular Facebook applications leak personal information to advertisers. 'Many of the popular applications, or 'apps,' on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information — in effect, providing access to people's names and, in some cases, their friends' names — to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies,' according to The Wall Street Journal, which wrote about Facebook Sunday in the latest installment of its recent 'What They Know' series about advertising and the Internet."
From my interpretation of TFA, it just looks like some apps were accidentally passing a referrer containing the user's Facebook ID.
"Recently, it has come to our attention that several applications built on Facebook Platform were passing the User ID (UID), an identifier that we use within our APIs, in a manner that violated this policy," Vernal wrote. "In most cases, developers did not intend to pass the information, but did so because of the technical details of how the browsers work."
"Press reports have exaggerated the implication of sharing at UID [user ID]. Knowledge of a UID does not enable anyone to access private user information without explicit user consent. Nevertheless, we are committed to ensuring that even the inadvertent passing of UIDs is prevented and all applications are in compliance with our policy."
Omnes stulti sunt.
Facebook isn't in the privacy business, its in the business business and until told to stop it, in court, via a socking great fine, it will carry on regardless.
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
You mean Zynga actually is the money hungry whore everyone thought it was?