In the Wall Street Journal ( please click on the hyperlink to read the full story and get some very good graphical information) today , a story was ran that detailed the violation of privacy that Facebook had insured to its subscribers, stemming mainly from the use of second party application developers for the more popular apps including : Farmville, Mafia Wars, Texas HoldEm, Frontierville, Causes, Cafe World, Quiz Planet, Treasure Isle, and IHeart.
Essentially what this means is that Facebook is in violation of its own terms of use. This was an issue the company had, reportedly, gone to great lengths to fix with new user agreement and supposedly better personal info protection. But in light of these findings by the WSJ, it is apparent that Facebook has failed to police itself and those that help to provide streams of revenue for the company. The bottom line in all of this is that if you engage in playing with these apps on Facebook, it is likely that media and advertisers are begin given your info and you are being targeted with spyware, spam, and other nuisances of digital life. Basically, you are being bought and sold without knowing it.
What needs to be asked here is: Who has the right to obtain my information, and have I been falsely led to believe that my information is safe? This isn't a question of social security numbers and bank info necessarily ( or at least not yet), but this is a question concerning the infringement of individual privacy; This is a question of have we become too trusting of software developers who realize that we are not educated enough about how this technology works to ensure we are able to maintain perhaps these new digital civil rights that are developing?
Where do you stand with this?
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