Facebook in Privacy Breach
One of this weekend’s tops stories is Facebook’s privacy breach by The Wall Street Journal’s “What They Know Series,” which says the company has violated it’s own privacy by passing identifying information about users to third-party applications, like the popular Farmville. Last week, Facebook faced some backlash over newly released Group features, which allows people to be added to a group without their knowledge. This data breach gives users even more cause for concern about the social networking company. Are you a Facebook user, and how to do you feel about the privacy breach? Leave us your comments below!
Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some cases, their friends’ names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.
The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook’s strictest privacy settings. The practice breaks Facebook’s rules, and renews questions about its ability to keep identifiable information about its users’ activities secure.
The problem has ties to the growing field of companies that build detailed databases on people in order to track them online—a practice the Journal has been examining in its What They Know series. It’s unclear how long the breach was in place. On Sunday, a Facebook spokesman said it is taking steps to “dramatically limit” the exposure of users’ personal information.
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