Did the Wall Street Journal Overreact to Facebook Privacy ‘Breach’?
The Wall Street Journal has been running an interesting series on online privacy, called “What They Know,” about the information advertisers (surreptitiously) collect about us based on our Internet activity. The latest in the series is titled, “Facebook in Privacy Breach,” and details how some popular applications on Facebook are leaking users’ “personal IDs” to advertisers. Here’s the alarming lead on the article:
Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting 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, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.
Using “breach” to describe this strikes me as overwrought. The applications reveal your name, that you are on Facebook, and possibly which application(s) you’ve downloaded. Is that something that we should be freaking out about? A host of experts debated the issue on Twitter last night.
