Old Facebook Apps Still Plunder Your Privacy 101
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."
FTFY (Score:5, Insightful)
Fixed that for you. No need to thank me.
Re:Lies (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Keep multiple profiles (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, you recommend that people directly violate facebooks terms of service:
Section 4:
# You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission. ... ....
# You will not create more than one personal profile.
# You will keep your contact information accurate and up-to-date.
Oh, and by recommending people create multiple profiles with false information you are also in violation of Facebook's terms of service yourself:
Section 3:
# You will not facilitate or encourage any violations of this Statement.
This is one of MANY reasons I recommend people not use facebook. I don't think their ToS are at all reasonable. If you have to blatantly violate them to make the site palatable, then don't use the site. Doing what you advocate just rewards them for being assholes, and if you ever have any sort of dispute with them they have you over a barrel because you are blatantly violating their ToS.
Don't use the apps in the first place (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
One or the other (Score:3, Insightful)
Facebook and privacy are mutually exclusive. You can have one or the other but not both. Personally, I think all the worry about "privacy" is extremely exaggerated and overblown. What are they going to do? Show me targeted ads? That's what AdBlock is for.
Unless you're actually stupid enough to put all sorts of personal info on Facebook, like your real name, address, etc. In that case you're a moron who deserves to be ass-raped by every script kiddie hacker wannabe.. The bottom line is very simple. If you really care about privacy, you don't have a Facebook account in the first place.