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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."
...and it is the end of privacy as we DON'T know it! :(
Mark Zuckerberg sure has a predisposition to violating people's privacy and trust.
I would quit facebook but then I would risk losing my 300+ distant, casual acquaintances
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
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.
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.
Not only does "obvious troll is obvious" work here, but you posted in the wrong fucking thread. Linux thread is the next story down you raging idiot. What is the world coming to when people can't even troll properly.
No stranger to privacy concerns, Facebook is one again in in the privacy spotlight...
Isn't "privacy spotlight" an oxymoron?
Are you suggesting that we need a new "ADD Troll" moderation?
One thing that pisses me off are the endless "Joe Blow has scored 100283 points on Fist the Goatse Guy"-type messages. You have to block that type of shit manually. They should have a default deny for that garbage.
End of Rant.
Trolling is a art,
but i want people to call me for a good time...but i dont want them to know who i am....i'll just write that my name is Jenny....
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
You mean Zynga actually is the money hungry whore everyone thought it was?
Firefox, greasemonkey add-on, and FBPurity. The "FB" stands for "Fluff Busting" not "facebook" for legal reasons...
It blocks app messages, groups joined, events attended, everything. You can whitelist some things that you might want to see and create your own list of blocked words if you want. It's the only thing that makes facebook vaguely usable in my book...
http://www.fbpurity.com/
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
I recently purchased an ad on facebook for my company's product.
I should have known something was awry when the following were offered as substitution variables in the ad copy:
$FIRST_NAME ...
$LAST_NAME
$WHAT_MOMMY_CALLS_THEM
$GENDER
$AGE_RANGE
$INCOME_LEVEL
$INCOME_LEVEL_REPORTED_ON_EHARMONY
$SEX_PARTNERS_IN_PAST_6_MONTHS
$SEX_PARTNERS_IN_PAST_6_MONTHS_REALLY
$POLITICAL_PARTY
$POLITICAL_PARTY_THEY_ACTUALLY_VOTE_FOR
$SPOUSE_BIRTHDAY
$MISTRESS_BIRTHDAY
$FACEBOOK_USER_THEY_STALK_MOST
$CREDIT_CARD_LAST_4_DIGITS
$CREDIT_CARD_FIRST_12_DIGITS
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
It's not a "privacy leak" if you type the $#!% in yourself!
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
This a passing of a user ID only. If that user has setup their profile correctly nothing can be gained from that user ID. It's no different than typing a random name in the search and going to the returned user's pages.
Don't post anything you wouldn't want all your friends to know. Remember that you have friends you don't know about, the one's who pay FB to be your "secret friends". Isn't it nice to have so many friends?
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
That the apps with problems are the top ones.
How do they become top apps?
They work, are designed well, and are appealing to their audience both graphically and functionally.
How do apps that best meet these criteria get built? By hiring top-notch programmers, web designers, and marketers.
What do you need to hire top-notch programmers, designers, and marketers? Lots of financial backing?
How do you get lots of financial backing and excellent investors? By selling a very good business plan.
How do you get lots of money to fund development? Advertising and information brokering.
What do advertisers pay a lot for? Extremely well-targetted ads that take into account specific characteristics of the audience.
What do information brokers pay a lot for? Private information about your users.
Imagine going through this crap.
Chuck in Fargo needs help building his barn.
Mary in New York needs to borrow some fertilizer.
Some data miner for Farmville hates his life.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Deselecting any of the items on the list blocks access to the application. An application, which, I might add, doesn't need any of that info to operate correctly.
Given that the sole purpose of those apps is to collect such information, they actually do need that info to operate correctly.
You didn't think they exist to entertain you, did you? Really?