What Facebook App’s Are Really Saying About You
Responding to a recent investigation conducted by The Wall Street Journal, a Facebook spokesperson said the following, “Our technical systems have always been complemented by strong policy enforcement, and we will continue to rely on both to keep people in control of their information.” This official response was precipitated by an eye-opening investigation on the “apps” available to Facebook members, and how they have been found to transmit information about users to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies.
The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook’s strictest privacy settings. The information being transmitted involves the unique “Facebook ID” number assigned to every user on the site. Since a Facebook user ID is a public part of any Facebook profile, anyone can use an ID number to look up a person’s name with just a standard browser, even if that person has set all of his or her Facebook information to be private. For other users, the Facebook ID reveals information they have set to share with “everyone,” including age, residence, occupation and photos.
The Wall Street Journal’s investigation found that all of the 10 most popular “apps”, software that let Facebook’s 500 million users play games or share common interests, were transmitting users’ IDs to outside companies. These included FarmVille, with 59 million users, Texas HoldEm Poker, and FrontierVille. In addition, three of the top 10 apps, including FarmVille, have also been transmitting personal information about a user’s friends to outside companies.
The problem has ties to the growing field of companies that build databases of detailed demographics on people in order to track them online—a practice that has privacy proponents up in arms. Defenders of online tracking argue that this kind of surveillance is benign because it is conducted anonymously. However, in this case, the Journal found that one data-gathering firm, RapLeaf Inc., had linked Facebook user ID information obtained from “apps” to its own database of Internet users. RapLeaf also transmitted the Facebook IDs it obtained to a dozen other firms, the Journal found.
What does this mean to you? It’s simple, this type of personal information can fall into the wrong hands, giving criminals an open invitation to commit crimes. Remember, companies such as RapLeaf have no restrictions on how they distribute your personal information. In addition, any company that doesn’t have adequate online security can be hacked by cyberthieves who use personal information as currency to commit identity theft, credit card fraud and other crimes. Protect your personal information with Anonymizer Universal.