Wall Street Journal probe finds Facebook apps reveal user info
The Wall Street Journal investigated the privacy of Facebook users, finding that popular applications, such as FarmVille, send a user's personal information to marketing companies in a violation of Facebook privacy rules.
The Wall Street Journal published its findings Monday in a reveal exposing how marketers collect data about consumers -- when those same consumers are not aware their data is being "grabbed." More than one of the companies receiving personal information about users was selling that data, said Wall Street journalists Emily Steel and Geoffrey A. Fowler.
Steel and Fowler said they became interested in seeing if a user's personal information really was protected earlier this month after
"... Facebook created a control panel that lets users see which apps are accessing which categories of information about them."
Facebook, along with at least one of the companies that had received personal data, as well as a few bloggers have downplayed the privacy breach, saying the Wall Street Journal "over-reacted." The breach, they say, is not new, does not represent a conspiracy, and isn't something to worry about. Forbes blogger, Kashmir Hill wrote that the "breach" was nothing more than a design flaw, pointing out that My Space has the same issue. Hill thought the Wall Street Journal was unfairly singling out Facebook.
The Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro also had a similar analysis to Hill's. There's nothing new to the information Facebook reveals, Pegoraro said, while asserting that the information that is commonly revealed about Facebook users every day, even when those users opt for maximum privacy, is not private information.
For those wishing to learn more about how they can protect their privacy on Facebook, the Huffington Post has published three tips.
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