Wall Street Journal Monday’s report stirs a severe turbulence among
Facebook users and industry analysts who began to
question whether Facebook is working hard enough to protect its users or their
personal information, again.
As what Wall Street Journal reports based on its own invetigation, some of Facebook’s most popular
applications have been sending users’ personal information to dozens of advertising and Internet monitoring companies, and tens of millions of Facebook users are affected by this
issue.
The Journal’s investigation found that 10 of Facebook’s most popular apps are leaking the unique “Facebook ID” numbers of users to the
third-party companies, and the highly popular Farmville
app, which has some 59 million users, transmits information of users’ friends. And the other
popular applications involved include Texas HoldEm Poker and FrontierVille, etc.
Facebook has confronted one
privacy issue after another this year, but the
latest issue is regarded as the most
serious privacy problems Facebook have confronted ever since.
Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group, noted the latest
problem could cause more trouble for the social networking
company than all the others.
“This builds on an ongoing theme that Facebook can’t be trusted, which could do the service serious damage over time,”
said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group.
No matter what, Facebook still insists that it takes user privacy very seriously.
“We are dedicated to protecting private user data while letting users enjoy rich experiences with their friends,” wrote Mike Vernal, a Facebook engineer, in a
blog post Monday.
“Recently, it has come to our attention that several applications built on Facebook Platform were passing the User ID (UID), an identifier that we use within our APIs, in a manner that violated [our] policy. In most cases, developers did not intend to pass this information, but did so
because of the technical details of how browsers work,” Vernal said.
However, users’ rage and distrust emotions can’t be handily appeased this time.
“Nice. What a pile of crap!,” wrote Oyaki Ahanaf, a Facebook user, in response to Vernal’s blog post. “So we are expected to believe that these ‘developers’ had no idea whatsoever that UIDs were being passed to 3rd party advertisers???!!!”
And user Josh Lowen responded to Vernal’s blog by writing, “I don’t believe you. I think you knew this was going on, and LET IT because you know that’s how the companies are making
money (and you need them to
make money for you to make money.) Sheisters, the lot of you”.
The distrust mood also emerges among industry anlysts.
Dan Olds comments, “I’ve always thought that the real privacy weakness in Facebook, after they took care of setting up better controls, was related to third-party apps. I don’t know if I’d call what happened a privacy
breach, because a breach implies that there was some privacy mechanism that was somehow gotten around or penetrated. From what I can tell so far, these companies were just using all the information they had routine access to — implying that FB never had mechanisms in place to limit the info that apps providers harvested.”
Oops! It’s indeed a serious issue, serious enough to attract lawmakers attention.
On Tuesday, two members of the U.S. Congress hit Facebook with a series of questions about the latest privacy issues surrounding the site’s most popular applications.
In their letter, Barton and Markey said that “Given the
number of current users, the rate at which that number grows worldwide, and the age range of Facebook users, combined with the amount and the nature of information these users place in Facebook’s trust, this series of breaches of consumer privacy is a cause for concern. As I am sure you are
aware, the Committee on Energy and Commerce is the primary House panel responsible for oversight of consumer privacy. As I am sure you also are aware, comprehensive privacy legislation is currently pending before the Committee.”
18 questions are mentioned in the letter.
Among the questions, one is to ask the Facebook CEO when the company was aware of the problem, and whether affected Facebook users have been notified that their personal information has been breached.
Agreements between Facebook and the third-party APP suppliers are also asked to be disclosed to the lawmakers.
Explanation seems not work this time and it’s stringent for Facebook to take steps to erase anxieties among society. Wait and see what Facebook will take up to resolve this crisis and regain public confidence.
Tulisan Terkait