They are watching you (even more than you think)
If you are in Facebook is because you want to share some of your privacy with your friends. It’s not a secret that all or part of your information can be used by others (tagging you in a picture from last night’s crazy party, for example), but there is still much more that you don’t know that others know about you (and your friends). You have to be careful about the Applications you use in Facebook, because you are giving them access to your private information. Voluntarily.
Last October, the Wall Street Journal published an investigation about Facebook privacy breach through some applications, giving access to third parties advertising and Internet tracking companies. Thanks to that, some people/companies can see/use personal information from several Facebook users, even those with the strictest privacy settings. The article named some top-ranked applications as FarmVille, Texas HoldEm Poker or FrontierVille (among others). Although this practice breaks Facebook’s rules, the point is that users are giving access to their information voluntarily (but not consciously).
Those applications always request for your permission to access to your personal information. You can allow them or leave the application, but they will request your permission to do the following (as you can find when you try to get one):
• Access your basic information. This basic information includes your name, profile picture, gender, networks, user ID, list of friends, and more.
• Post to your (own) Wall. That’s it: this application may post status messages, notes, photos and videos to your Wall.
• Access to your data any time. As it says: any time. The application may access your data (even) when you are not using the application.
Notice that they use the auxiliary verb may (to express possibility, opportunity or permission). It doesn’t say that they are going to do it but they may…
It’s not that you have something to hide, and we love communication and any way possible to be in contact with what you like or not, what you do or not (it makes it easier to give you information that you may find interesting as travel offers, sales, etc)… But always in a way that you know it voluntarily and consciously, because you really want to share that information.
If you are using those applications and want to remove them from your account, just find how to in the Facebook Help Center.