Processing .....please wait.. 
The article has been forwarded.... 
Facebook generates user info to companies
By siliconindia
|
Wednesday, 20 October 2010, 18:43 IST
Bangalore: Many of the ppopular applications in the social networking site Facebook are found to be generating information about the users and their friends to advertising companies, reports Emily Steel and Geoffrey A Fowler from The Wall Street Journal.
Citing its own investigations, the daily said that many of the most popular applications or "apps" on Facebook have been transmitting and identifying information in effect, providing access to people's names and, in some cases, their friends' names, to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies. The apps reviewed by the Journal were sending Facebook ID numbers to at least 25 advertising and data firms, several of which build profiles of Internet users by tracking their online activities.
The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook's strictest privacy settings. The practice, which breaks Facebook's rules renews questions about its ability to keep identifiable information about its users' activities secure.
Facebook's 500 million users use these apps to play games or share common intererst with one another. Three of the top 10 apps, including FarmVille, have found to be transmitting personal information about a user's friends to outside companies.
