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Apps Caught Leaking Facebook User Data to Third-Parties

by Terrence O'Brien on October 18, 2010 at 01:20 PM

FarmVille Controlling Your Privacy
A Wall Street Journal investigation recently revealed that some of the most popular apps on Facebook were handing over your data to third parties, including advertising networks and Internet tracking companies. Many apps, including the popular/obnoxious 'FarmVille,' have been sending not just your own unique Facebook ID to others (regardless of your privacy settings), but also handing over data about your friends. In fact, even if you don't use one of the guilty apps it's possible that your information has been leaked thanks to a friend's poor choice in apps. (Hello 'Quiz Creator'!) Once a company has your user ID, anything public on your page becomes instantly indexable and usable data for building a profile of your habits, tastes and the company you keep.

This breach of user privacy is obviously a cause for concern, but perhaps most importantly, it raises questions about Facebook's ability to police its own platform. This sharing of identifiable data is a blatant violation of the site's terms of service. That three of the ten most popular apps were also mining data about users' friends shows that even seemingly trustworthy apps do not take the rules regarding Facebook data seriously.

A spokesperson for Facebook told the Wall Street Journal that the social networking site would be implementing new technologies to safeguard user data, and suspended several apps found to be leaking user data. Some companies, including Rapleaf (one of the third parties receiving user data), claimed that they were not violating Facebook rules, and that Facebook ID numbers were included accidentally.

Mark Zuckerberg and crew appear to be taking this latest privacy debacle seriously enough, but the damage has already been done. With tens of millions of accounts compromised and dozens of third parties currently in possession of their Facebook account info it's time to reevaluate how private your data really is. We've shown you how to protect yourself from apps and your friends before, and Valleywag has a good guide for blocking applications, and thus third-parties, from accessing your data.

To keep your friends from inadvertently sharing your info, go to the "Applications, games and websites" section of your privacy settings. Click the "edit settings" button next to "info accessible through your friends." After the shock of seeing all those checked off boxes subsides, uncheck all of them. Even if you're not paranoid, we recommend doing this. You can't control what your careless friends install on their Facebook profiles, but you can limit your exposure to their poor judgment.

remove unwantedIf you want to turn off certain applications that were singled out, including 'FarmVille,' 'FrontierVille,' 'Texas HoldEm Poker,' 'Gift Creator,' 'Quiz Creator,' and 'Familybuilder's Family Tree,' you can click the icon next to "remove unwanted or spammy applications" (also on the "Applications, games and websites" settings page). You'll be presented with a list of your installed apps, and clicking the "x" next to them will ask you to confirm that you want to delete it. If you don't want to take any chances, click 'turn of all platform applications,' which you can find just underneath the "remove unwanted apps" entry. Clicking on that link will open a dialog window, where you'll need to click "select all" at the bottom then click "turn off platform." Though if you're going to turn off all apps, you might as well consider deleting your account entirely.

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Tags: apps, facebook, farmville, privacy, security, social networking, SocialNetworking, top, we, web

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