Facebook Sharing Too Much Personal Data With Application Developers 165
An anonymous reader writes "Remember the Facebook News Feed privacy uproar? What about the Beacon scandal from late last year? Privacy activists are rallying around yet another major issue at Facebook, in which the company is secretly sharing user data with third parties. Researchers from the University of Virginia recently announced that in a study of the top 150 Facebook applications, more than 90% were given access to information that was not needed to function correctly. That Scrabble or Superpoke application you really like? Its developers get access to your religion, sexuality and home town. Facebook's position was summed up by Georgetown Law Professor Dan Solove, 'They seem to be going on the assumption that if someone uses Facebook, they really have no privacy concerns.' Do Facebook users deserve privacy? "
Re:Net (Score:3, Informative)
Well put. We must run under the assumptions that whatever information we provide to websites will not remain confidential, privileged, private or otherwise secure. Sites have privacy policies for a reason, yet some users seem to get upset when something clearly outlined in the policy comes to light. I, on my part, read the FaceBook applications privacy policy and never had any hopes that my information would be secure.
(i) any information provided by you and visible to you on the Facebook Site, excluding any of your Contact Information, and
(ii) the user ID associated with your Facebook Site profile.
Re:Information sharing is optional (Score:5, Informative)
It's quite poopular (Score:2, Informative)
That's just it: no one who adds the applications gives a crap about their privacy. When you add an application, there are several checkboxes, and you don't have to have them ALL checked in order to add an application, but the only one you DO have to have checked is the "Allow this application to know who I am and to access my information" box. If you uncheck that and try to add the application, Facebook tells you that you need to have this checked, and if you don't feel safe about that, don't add the application. Therefore, IMHO, Facebook gives plenty of warning to those adding applications.
However, I have very few applications on my Facebook - I don't care about the OC, or Dawson's Creek Quotes, or Hot Or Not. I find that the demographic of people that add those kinds of applications don't give two shits about their privacy, and they never read the fine print. They just want to show their friends how much they like the OC or Dawson's Creek. It's just natural selection, internet-style.
Re:Translated Quote... (Score:5, Informative)
You can disable this loophole in Facebook's settings (go to Privacy > Applications > Other Applications and set it to "do not share"), but it isn't made very clear that by default your private details are nevertheless accessible to third-party apps through your friends list. Facebook should make this much more explicit (or perhaps have this setting default to "do not share" for anyone who sets their main profile to private?).
Re:Net (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Net (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's an API (Score:4, Informative)
http://developers.facebook.com/documentation.php?v=1.0&doc=misc [facebook.com]
Re:Net (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. They do.
Read the article, and if you're on Facebook, go to "privacy" -> "Applications" -> "Other Applications" and read what it says under "What Other Users Can See via the Facebook Platform" very, very carefully.
Re:Automaticly install applications? (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA (and I quote:)
To restate things--if you set your profile to private, and one of your friends adds an application, most of your profile information that is visible to your friend is also available to the application developer--even if you yourself have not installed the application.
It seems that they do give my info to third parties - third parties being all the stupid applications that my friends installed. I keep very minimal info on my facebook account and don't install any apps because they require full access to my profile, but I still went and turned this sharing off just now. WTF, why did I just learn that every application that any of the 60 of my networked friends has installed could have been happily roaming through my account without my knowledge?
It's not that simple (Score:3, Informative)