In what seems to be yet another breach of privacy, Facebook announced last week that developers of third party applications will now have access to users address and phone numbers as part of the open graph platform. Third party applications could include anything from Farmville to Pandora- and worst of all- anyone can create a third party application. Jeff Bowen reports, "These permissions must be explicitly granted to your application by the user via our standard permissions dialogs." But does anyone actually read those standard permissions dialogs? I highly doubt it. And in my opinion, it's up to facebook- not facebook users- to monitor the permissions on all games and applications to ensure safety on this popular social networking site.
Although facebook quickly retracted their statement, fb users are not in the clear. The risks associated with social network sites, like facebook and twitter, are already on the rise, as reported by security firm, Sophos.
Have you ever taken a quiz on facebook? Played a game? Accessed an application? Well, that permission screen that you allowed without bothering to read perhaps gave developers access to your:
• Basic Information
• Profile Information
• Contact Information
• Family & Relationships
• Photos & Videos
• Friends Info
• 24/7 Access
• And possibly much more!
Don't believe me? Check out every application that has access to your personal info right now in your Apps and Websites Privacy Settings.
After receiving a massive amount of negative feedback this past weekend, facebook decided to change the game plan slightly by retracting and improving the permissions procedure. Douglas Purdy posted on the fb developer blog, "We are making changes to help ensure you only share this information when you intend to do so. We'll be working to launch these updates as soon as possible, and will be temporarily disabling this feature until those changes are ready. We look forward to re-enabling this improved feature in the next few weeks."
However, even though this issue is being fixed, I'm still wary about anyone having access to my private information. One of the biggest problems is that these highly personal data fields are not differentiated from requests for more acceptable data, such as having access to the fan pages a user likes or privileges to publish to a user's news stream.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared his take on facebook and privacy when he stated, "When we started Facebook, we built it around a few simple ideas. People want to share and stay connected with their friends and the people around them. When you have control over what you share, you want to share more. When you share more, the world becomes more open and connected."
However, sharing would be simplified if facebook filled us in on these important changes instead of just letting developers know about the new, private information they now have access to.
Even though they have already retracted their initial statement about these changes, they still plan to share our personal information eventually, in some way, shape or form. I sincerely hope that what we get in return is not scams, spam, hackers, and regret.
Whose side are you on anyway, Facebook? That's the real question at hand.