February 5, 2008...5:57 pm
Facebook Privacy Concerns
I know that Facebook is a very popular website for students. But, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (link only available for 5 days after this post), if you use any of Facebook’s add-on applications, you may be giving out information that you don’t want to give out. I realize that there is a lot of information that people are giving to Facebook itself. But, according to research done by Adrienne Felt, senior in computer science at the University of Virginia, these applications send more information than is needed to these 3rd party developers.
When you add an application you must check the box that will allow that application to “Know who I am and access my information.” But, as Ms. Felt addresses on her website
“Privacy settings can be applied to friends’ applications, but one standard is set for all applications. There’s no way to say, “X gets my hometown but Y only gets my favorite music.” The principle of least authority, a security design principle, states that an actor should only be given the privileges needed to perform a job. In other words, an application that doesn’t need private information shouldn’t be given any.”
Further, her study’s statistical analysis of the top 150 applications found:
- 8.7% didn’t need any information
- 82% used public data (name, network, list of friends)
- only 9.3% needed private information (e.g., birthday).
“Since all of the applications are given full access to private data, this means that 90.7% of applications are being given more privileges than they need.”
Or, if you’re a more visual learner:
So, if you’re concerned about privacy at all and you have a Facebook account, think twice about adding any applications. At least that’s what I think.
1 Comment
May 8, 2008 at 4:13 pm
[...] Privacy Concerns pt. 2 Posted May 8, 2008 A few months ago, I posted about a computer science major who had done some research about the third party applications that [...]
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