Facebook Punishes Devs Who Shared User IDs 71
A couple weeks ago, we discussed news that some Facebook application developers were selling or accidentally sharing user IDs to advertisers and data brokers in violation of Facebook's privacy terms. Now, the company writes that they've updated the policy to dictate how UIDs can be handled within applications, and also punished the offending developers by blocking access to the site's communication channels for a period of six months. Quoting:
"While we determined that no private user data was sold and confirmed that transfer of these UIDs did not give access to any private data, this violation of our policy is something we take seriously. As such, we are taking action against these developers by instituting a 6-month full moratorium on their access to Facebook communication channels, and we will require these developers to submit their data practices to an audit in the future to confirm that they are in compliance with our policies. This impacts fewer than a dozen, mostly small developers, none of which are in the top 10 applications on Facebook Platform. We have also reached an agreement with Rapleaf, the data broker who came forward to work with us on this situation. Rapleaf has agreed to delete all UIDs in its possession, and they have agreed not to conduct any activities on the Facebook Platform (either directly or indirectly) going forward."
read between the lines (Score:4, Interesting)
"While we determined that no private user data was sold..."
Isn't this one of the companies (along with google) that declared that "privacy on the web no longer exists" or something along those lines?
hence, no "private user data" can be sold because all user data is public, therefore no crime has been committed.
Making an example (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting. If you want to make an example out of them, then this seems effective. Still, would they have been so harsh against a dev if they were in the top 10? What if Zynga had done this, do you think FB would have banned them for months?
Re:read between the lines (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly, but we've been setting up these double standards where nearly every country in the world has slammed Google for collecting private data for themselves (which of course they claim is an accident), and then Facebook essentially lets any app developer do the same thing (again unintentional).
Now the developers have actually gone and made money off that data, and now less than a dozen of the smallest targets are getting picked off.How on Earth is that fair?
IF we're going to get mad at Google for roaming around in a car picking up SSID's than WHY can't we get mad at Zynga for taking whatever information they have about me and making money by selling it? If the argument is that "it's public anyways, anyone can just look it up" for your facebook info, why is listening to unsecured wifi considered illegal?
I don't really care if the law went one way or the other, (Well I have my preferences), but its far more annoying when its inconsistant rather than my way.