Old Facebook Apps Still Plunder Your Privacy

tcd004 writes "If you added the YouTube Facebook app prior to 2009, you've given YouTube free access to nearly all the data in your profile (as well as many of your friends). But if you install the same app today, it gets very limited access. Older versions of Facebook apps, it turns out, still have 'grandfathered' access to data that the social networking service has restricted for new apps. If you're protective of your privacy, it might be a good idea to delete and reinstall any older apps in your profile."

Comments

FTFY

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"If you're protective of your privacy, it might be a good idea to delete your profile."

Fixed that for you. No need to thank me.

Re:FTFY

[characterZer0]

The only winning move is not to play.

I did

[improfane]

I deleted my profile but not before changing me name and deleting lots of stuff.

One thing you should know is that Facebook never deletes anything. Even if you tell it to. The new visibility is just 'appended' to the end of your account. Bit like a journal. TFA does not surprise me.

So if they really wanted to rewind your profile, they could. I imagine the authorities have this privilege.

Think how much time you'll save yourself from FB if you delete it now. I mean you could spend that time on Slashdot instead!

Re:I did

[ConceptJunkie]

It amazes me how so many people think that that is automatically bad.

There's nothing in my profile that I wouldn't mind anyone seeing, and I've shared a fair amount of information.

With regard to potential future employers... if they don't want me because of something I put on FB, then they are definitely not the kind of people I would want to work for.

Anything I've posted on FB with respect to my interests, affiliations, friends, etc, is not something you couldn't find elsewhere with a little legwork or at worst hiring a PI for a few hours. I just don't see what the big deal is provided you show a little common sense in what you are making public, and more importantly, make it a point of not doing things you wouldn't want people to know about. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned that way.

Re:Lies

[betterunixthanunix]

Do you browse your friends' profiles? Do you send Facebook messages to them? Do you use Facebook's real-time chat? Facebook records everything you do on the website -- just using Facebook means giving them information. It does not really matter if you lie about your age -- what matters is if you list your friends (not even accurately -- even if you have 1000 "friends," they will just take a look at the profiles you visit most frequently).

Everything about Facebook is designed to extract information from you. The fact that you lied or left things blank on your profile has probably been detected, and used to construct the real profile about you: what sort of a person you are, what sort of advertisements you are most likely to pay attention to.

On the other hand...

[pedantic bore]

While "delete your apps periodically and re-add them as needed" is probably very good advice most of the time, are there any cases where apps are getting worse with respect to privacy, and so having a newer version of an app is worse than having the older version?

It seems likely that someone out there, having gotten a whiff of the money that might be made, is actually getting worse about this...

Don't use the apps in the first place

[roc97007]

I always felt that using third party apps in Facebook was a little like playing flash games on random websites -- you're giving alien code full access to whatever information you have on Facebook, and may even be opening attack vectors on your local computer.

The friends and family in my close circle range from promoting social networks for a living, to distrusting them entirely and refusing to participate even under an assumed name. I'm somewhere in the middle -- I have a small circle of friends whom I actually know, I have security locked down appropriately with periodic reviews, and I never play the games or use any of the apps. No interest in virtual organized crime, virtual farms, virtual restaurants, or today's fortune, and I don't care that someone has answered a question about me that I need to click to unlock. And I have absolutely no interest in revealing my Netflix queue to my mom. Like any tool, you can use it properly or poke your eye out, your choice.

For the facebook user swamped with lonely little cows and pillow fights in their news feed, do this: Mouse over the little "x" in the upper corner of the item. Observe a popup allowing you to "block user-name" or "block application-name". Choose the latter, and that particular app will never be seen again. Do this consistently for a week or so and you find that your news feed has been reduced from a firehose of banality to a trickle of genuine social interaction. In the rare cases where your nephew finds new crap to plaster on your wall faster than you can update your blacklist, you can always "block user-name" and ban him from your news feed. He'll never know.

Stop using Facebook? It's a little like saying "Why don't you avoid the spam and 419 scams and viruses -- just stop using email!" If you said that in 1995 you might get a few people nodding their heads. In 2010 it's a ridiculous statement.