Several of the Popular Facebook applications are transmitting personal data to advertising and internet tracking companies according to the WSJ.
WSJ reports that millions of users are affected by this privacy breach, including those users who are using Facebook’s highest level of privacy settings. This practice is against breaks Facebook’s rules concerning privacy, which state that app developers were not allowed to pass user’s data to outside firms, even if the user has given permission. This has renewed concerns about Facebook’s ability to keep its users’ information secure.
The WSJ said the apps were passing Facebook IDs to at least 25 firms, who use them to build profiles of web users. WSJ also pointed out that a particular firm called RapLeaf was using the Facebook IDs in its own database as well as passing them on to several other firms.
All of the 10 most popular apps that include popular games like Zynga’s FarmVille, Texas Holdem Poker, FrontierVille, were found to be transmitting users’ IDs.
Most apps are developed by third-parties and not by Facebook. If you are unable to access some apps starting this weekend, then Facebook might have disabled them.
“We have taken immediate action to disable all applications that violate our terms,” Facebook said.
It is not known how long apps on Facebook have been transmitting user’s information. All the parties said they have no idea the breach was occurring.
A Zynga spokeswoman said, “Zynga has a strict policy of not passing personally identifiable information to any third parties. We look forward to working with Facebook to refine how web technologies work to keep people in control of their information.”
Facebook said it is working to “dramatically limit” the exposure of users’ personal information and introduce new systems to make it harder for apps to send user data to other companies.
On January 20th, the new Facebook Email API will go live. This means that developers’ applications will soon have the ability to send emails to their users.
For developers, there are 2 ways of using the new email sharing features:
- If the developers want to make email sharing optional, users will be prompted with this permissions dialog box:
- On the other hand, if the developers want to make email sharing a requirement, users will be prompted with this permissions dialog box:
Because of this is new development that Facebook users should be aware of, the social networking site will be posting this message at the top of the Facebook apps page for the next three months:
Facebook users should not be too worried though, because they have the option to choose to give a proxy email address instead of their real address for some applications. In addition, Facebook has privacy policies that developers must follow.
Some of Facebook’s privacy policies include:
- Prohibition to give or sell users’ email addresses to any third party or affiliate.
- Compliance with the Federal Trade Commission’s CAN-SPAM Act provisions and all other applicable spam laws.
- Clear explanation to users how their email addresses will be used.
- Clear indication in emails sent that they are from the developer and must not appear to be from Facebook or anyone else. The emails, therefore, must not include Facebook logos or brand assets, as well as the word “Facebook” in the subject line, “from” line, or body header.
- All emails to users must originate from the domain in the Facebook Developer’s application.
Despite all these rules, this new development may seem like a red flag. However, only time and experience will tell if it will really benefit both user and developer.
Only a month in existence and already Web 2.0 Suicide Machine (SM) has been banned by Facebook. In fact, SM publicizes this with the words, “2010 starts with a Facebook ban!”
Suicide Machine (http://suicidemachine.org/) was developed by Moddr, a company based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. It is a site that allows you to disconnect from social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn) permanently. This means that you cannot resurrect yourself after Suicide Machine has severed your social networking connections.
To delete your profile in social networking sites, SM requires your username and password to the site. Then you can watch from your computer how quickly albeit one by one SM deletes your pictures, messages, friends, etc. They boast that manually deleting all profile information is never complete. Some remnants can be dug up in the future. However, when SM does it for the user, that will no longer happen.
Many bloggers think that the reason Facebook launched a war against sites the delete profiles is because their profit relies on the number of users. If their users decrease, so do their profits.
SM vows to find a way to continue their mission of providing freedom to Facebook users who want it. For now, nobody knows if they will succeed or be permanently prevented from getting into the social networking site.
