Facebook Privacy Issues
Facebook has registered a lot of talk recently in terms of their Privacy Policy (or lack there of). The biggest, most growing concern with personal social networking sites is the growing amount of personal information that users must attach to their profiles. Even more, companies and "apps" are mining this information for personal purposes.
In all honesty, this isn't a direct strike against Facebook, as they are only the facilitator of the information that passes between user and company. Nonetheless, a growing outcry against social media giant has caused a great stir among the ranks of users.
Most recently Zynga, the happy-go-lucky company that has brought us fun work distractions like Farmville, and Mafia Wars, has become entangled in a sloppy privacy policy mess. Allegedly, the company is responsible for collecting and sharing the data of 218 million Facebook user IDs with advertisers and data brokers. And as far as privacy allegations go in the social media realm, that is one hot tamale.
As PCWorld explains it:
The class-action lawsuit comes on the heels of an investigation into data handling practices by The Wall Street Journal. The Journal reported that Facebook applications were transmitting Facebook User IDs (UIDs) to advertisers and Internet tracking firms. UIDs are unique numbers assigned to each Facebook account. The UID could be used to find a person's public profile page on Facebook and discover their real name and any public profile information. The Journal named Zynga games including Farmville, Texas HoldEm Poker and Frontierville among the Facebook applications transmitting user data to third parties.
The Journal's report has garnered a lot of controversy in just a few days, as well as interest from Congressmen Edward Markey (D., Mass.) and Joe Barton (R., Texas) leaders of the House Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus. But opinion among critics is split over whether this so-called privacy breach is much ado about nothing or something more serious. Some critics say knowing a person's Facebook UID is as harmless as finding someone's name in the phone book. Others, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, see it as a systemic problem with how Facebook polices its third-party application developers.
It is important for companies in our growing digital world to understand the presets and onslaughts that come from defrauding and abusing those that give the power. I am of course referring to the power of the people. Hopefully this mess is straightened out, but in the mean time, Facebook users have to be cognicent of their profiles and information. After all, using your Facebook profile, a bank hacker has access your name, birthday, email address, home address, and probably your mother's maiden name.
Again, simply sharing a UID address isn't a huge deal, but is part of an possible overarching problem facing the world of social media, in particular, Facebook.
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Justin DiSandro joined SocialTechPop at its inception in 2010. He has been integral in growing the blog by working closely with the technology and the pop culture community. His sarcastic wit and charm has earned him numerous writing awards and accolades, and his absurd knowledge of all things "pop" has earned him recognition throughout the entertainment industry. His writings have appeared in countless magazines, literary journals, and documentaries, as well as being quoted by a variety of scholarly studies and film fests.