Clarion Content

This is not really news. The Clarion Content has been covering for years now the ways in which Facebook exploits the information it collects about its users. Facebook collects this information with or without the user's consent. This week the Wall Street Journal highlighted another way that Facebook can and does take advantage of users.

Facebook applications like FarmVille, Quiz Maker, Texas Hold'em, and Frontierville, to name but a few, have shared tens of millions of Facebook users' personal information to third-party advertisers without users' consent. The Wall Street Journal reports,

"The information being transmitted is one of Facebook's basic building blocks: the unique 'Facebook ID' number assigned to every user on the site. Since a Facebook user ID is a public part of any Facebook profile, anyone can use an ID number to look up a person's name, using a standard Web browser, even if that person has set all of his or her Facebook information to be private. For other users, the Facebook ID reveals information they have set to share with 'everyone,' including age, residence, occupation and photos.

The apps reviewed by the Journal were sending Facebook ID numbers to at least 25 advertising and data firms, several of which build profiles of Internet users by tracking their online activities."

Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation explained to MSNBC why this is a nightmarish problem,

"Apps help advertising companies track users and create a very sensitive dossier of your interests, all with the constant reassurance that your real identity is protected. By handing over Facebook user IDs, apps enable advertisers to tie your real name and identity, so these behavior advertising companies have detailed information about you, and now they have a real name to put to those logs."

Facebook is not worried, nor in any hurry to deal with these concerns. After all, selling this kind of data about its users is Facebook's lifeblood. It is how they make their money. A Facebook spokesperson pandered to the Wall Street Journal's points without saying anything substantial about changes it intended to implement, "This is an even more complicated technical challenge than a similar issue we successfully addressed last spring on Facebook.com, but one that we are committed to addressing."

Paraphrased that reads, "Yeah, uh, we will get right on that. Thanks."

Labels: Politics, technology, weather