I have long been predicting doom, gloom, and the end of the world whenever I think about Facebook applications. The problem is that virtually anyone can build a Facebook application, and each of them can collect personal information and introduce security problems. Here is a report for Canada’s Privacy Commissioner’s office about a recent study of the privacy risks of Facebook applications.
Privacy in Facebook apps – the risk of the SuperPoke
The application took them three hours to create and allowed them to not only collect personal information about the Facebook user who had downloaded the application, but all of his friends as well.
What I find irritating is the way it’s designed to be all or nothing. In order to use some applications I need to make at least my name, network, and friends available to all of them. Yes, I can block specific ones I dislike, but it would be nicer if there was a “block all but these” option.
Good blog
Keep up the good work! 🙂