The alarm was set off by the prestigious American media The Wall Street Journal (full article). According to the media, numerous applications available on Facebook, especially games, transmitted information to companies about the identity of millions of users, which violates the confidentiality rules of the social network.
The newspaper notes that the developers of some of the most popular applications, most notably farmville (which has 59 million users), Texas Holdem Poker and FrontierVille, irregularly transmitted users' personal information to advertisers and research companies.
Among those data are the name of the users and their contacts. Even this irregular function affected people who had their profiles configured with the highest security restrictions.
"This practice violates Facebook's rules and reopens questions about its ability to protect our users' information." It also notes that a spokesman for the Internet giant has already taken note of the case and is taking steps to reduce the exposure of its users' personal information.
"A Facebook user's identity can be unintentionally shared by a user's browser or by an app," the spokesperson added. However, he also explained that knowing the identity of a user "does not allow access to the private information that is on Facebook" and assured that the company would neutralize the problem identified by the newspaper.
The apps are providing access to the names of Facebook members and, in some cases, those of their "friends" to companies that build detailed databases, the Journal reported.
The total of the 10 most popular apps are transmitting user identification numbers (ID numbers) to outside companies, the newspaper said. Among the apps that break safety rules are FarmVille, which has 59 million users, Texas HoldEm and FrontierVille.
To reflect this, the WSJ said several apps became inaccessible to users after the newspaper informed Facebook that they were transmitting personal information: "We took immediate action to disable all apps that violate our terms," the spokesperson said.
Finally, WSJ reported that this situation goes against Facebook's policies since it specifically prohibits the creators of the applications from transferring data about users to external advertising and data companies, although the challenge will be to ensure that this policy is complied with throughout the more than 550,000 existing applications.
Source: Ambito and WSJ
