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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."
Yes, I'm surprised. Not at the fact that "private" data (in this case a UID that identifies a user that can be used to get their profile page and anything that they haven't hidden) has been released. No, I'm surprised at the fact that they are reporting it as an "inadvertent" release from the games and that people are shocked.
If Facebook let data slip to the games when they didn't mean to then that'd be news. The fact that games (which, lets face it, appear to rely on either a) horrible advertising or b) selling your details, because there's no other way they could make it so profitable) give out extra data to advertisers that Facebook policy says that they weren't meant to seems like just another day at the office for many of those time wasting game developers.