Facebook Accused of UserID Privacy Breach
October 18, 2010 No CommentsMany of Facebooks most widely used apps have been transmitting User IDs to advertisers and Internet-tracking companies. This massive privacy breach came upon the news circuit by the Wall Street Journal investigation. Once this breach occurs the advertiser is able to view what app the user has downloaded as well with all the information they make public to “everyone” on their facebook profile. Some of the most widely used apps on Facebook are Farmville and Texas HoldEm, which violate this breach. On Friday morning Facebook shut down LOLapps Media, one app company that was breaking the privacy breach by passing User IDs. However, LoLapps is now back up and running.
Facebook has posted on their developer blog last night: “Recently, it has come to our attention that several applications built on Facebook Platform were passing the User ID (UID), an identifier that we use within our APIs, in a manner that violated this policy. In most cases, developers did not intend to pass this information, but did so because of the technical details of how browsers work.”
To ensure that your privacy is kept “PRIVATE” on Facebook, make sure to do the following:
Go to Privacy Settings — > Applications, Games and Websites — > Unwanted or spammy applications — > Click the “x” next to each application you do not use.
Facebook has also stated: “We are talking with our key partners and the broader Web community about possible solutions. We will have more details over the course of the next few days.”