Facebook is a phenomenon that has breached people everywhere. It is an easy connection from friends and coworkers to other friends and coworkers anywhere and everywhere. Besides the social network that is Facebook, it is also a place where users can control and choose to share information with people they are familiar with. But recently, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found that some Facebook applications have been exposing users' personal information to an outside party.
"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."
I believe I can speak for many others when I say that I use Facebook a lot. It is the main type of social networking that many people use these days. It has replaced myspace and personally, I use it more than I use instant messaging. I always believed that I could surf the web anonymously and use Facebook without a third party accessing my personal information. I think I can openly say for a lot of people that they would like to keep their personal information private while using Facebook. According to the investigation made by Wall Street Journal, popular applications "have been transmitting identifying information." This is very shocking because Facebook applications are overwhelmingly popular. Applications such as Farmville and Restaurant City have attracted millions of Facebook users and these users are unaware of their names or their friends' names being sent to advertising and Internet tracking companies. Facebook is indeed a growing social networking website that people everywhere appear to have connected with. Facebook should continue to strengthen its privacy functions so that users can continue to be anonymous and use the social networking site freely without their personal information being breached by third parties.
Reference:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304772804575558484075236968.html?KEYWORDS=facebookKEYWORDS%3Dfacebook
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© Facebook
2 comments:
I agree completely. Facebook makes billions of dollars revenue from advertising because people choose to use their service. A recent article I read cited Facebook as one of the most difficult websites to contact in case there are issues requiring technical support. I think FB needs to offer its users much more than they are providing.
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