I recently received an email from a friend asking how safe Face Book is and it inspired me to write this response as I have invited dozens of people to use it. Facebook is becoming more and more popular all the time but I don't think that its security is very safe. I am always careful what I put on FB, however I always apply that to anything that happens online now days, email, blogs, Youtube and even online games.
While we are guarded by our password, there are a lot of 3rd party developers that have access to your data on FB. For instance all those games that people like to play...Farmville, Yoville, Mafia Wars, Pirates and many more. There is also an ever growing list of new applications, the latest of which is 'Deaths Time', where I'm guessing you feed in a lot of information about yourself and it publishes an amusing death for you. Plus there are Birth date gathering applications such as FB Birthday cards, Year Book, Dead Rock Stars and a few others that are gathering names and data. I don’t want to sound alarmist but this seems like a recipe for Identify theft, if the information were to get into the wrong hands, but whose hands is that data in?
Growing gifts, hug and cuddle requests etc. Are fairly innocent, but you still have to grant access to your data. I think it’s only stuff like name, age and other information you put in about yourself, so they can target adds to your demographic. When you join these services, you have to tick a box saying that you grant the developer access to your data. This is a sample of what you are allowing...
“Allowing Birthday Cards access will let it access your Profile information, photos, your friends' info and other content that it requires to work.”
Joining Networks or Groups also grants people you don't know access to your info. I read an Article about a FB photo appearing in a newspaper. The woman was a member of the group 'Australia' or something similar and half the FB community in Australia is in the same group (currently 3.2 million people, the odd journalist among them I suspect!)
There are many privacy settings in FB and by default, they are set to give information to 'Networks and Friends'. The further you dig into this area the more paranoid you become, go to: Settings - Privacy Settings - Applications - Settings, you will discover more defaults you would rather not have known about. Also have a look at the applications that are installed on your Facebook, click the applications button at the bottom left then click Edit application to see the number of applications that have access to your data, I’m sure there are a few there that you didn’t allow, or were there by ‘default’.
Don’t get me wrong I think FB and other social networking sites are an important part of our lives now for communication and entertainment. They are starting to take over from email in a lot of cases. However having said all that most of my settings are on default, but I am careful about what I do and say on FB and I don’t let third party programs have access. So to all my friends, don’t be offended if I don’t poke you back, return the cuddle, share my birthday, collect your unwanted sheep or help you wipe out a crime family. So surf safe and be aware.
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