A Flashy Facebook Page, at a Cost to Privacy

[bicentennial_baby]

Facebook fanatics who have covered their profiles on the popular social networking site with silly games and quirky trivia quizzes may be unknowingly giving a host of strangers an intimate peek at their lives.

Those mini-programs, called widgets or applications, allow users to personalize their pages and connect with friends and acquaintances. But they could pose privacy risks. Some security researchers warn that developers of the software have assembled too much information -- home town, schools attended, employment history -- and can use the data in ways that could harm or annoy users.

"Everything requires you to give access to personal information or it forces you to ask your friends to do the same -- it becomes a real nuisance," said David Dixon, 40, an information technology consultant in Columbia who recently deleted most of the applications he had downloaded to his Facebook profile after reading on a blog that developers may have access to his information. "Why does a Sudoku puzzle have to know I have two kids? Why does a postcard need to know where I went to college?"

Even private profiles, in which personal details are available only to specific friends, reveal personal information, said Chris Soghoian, a cyber-security researcher at Indiana University. And they're allowing access to their friends' information -- even if their friends are not using the application. That's because MySpace and Facebook, the largest online social networks, let outside developers see a member's information when they add a program.
ad_icon

"You want to be social with your friends, but now you're giving 20 guys you've never met vast amounts of information from your profile," he said. "That should be troubling to people."

Much more here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/11/AR2008061103759.html?hpid=topnews

[Mountainman]

1. Simple, don't use it, they will get the message.

The guy goes to the doctor, the doctor asks what bothering the guy. The guy says, "It hurts when I do this." The doc says, "Don't do that."

[conspirator]

2. Not only that but a lot of open source PHP scripts are trojan horses with call home routines

that send your database details to some guy in china or russia.