News: BBC Thinks Facebook Is A Risk
The BBC published a story today about the possible risks associated with the installation of Facebook Applications.
Anyone with a basic understanding of web programming can write an application.We wrote an evil data mining application called Miner, which, if we wanted, could masquerade as a game, a test, or a joke of the day. It took us less than three hours.
The article notes that you have the option of turning off the ability of an app to acess your personal information, that’s the first check box you interact with when you decide to use an app. Even if an app does mine your info, it only has access to the information that you have already made public anyway. We here at Facebook Herald recommend that you use the same strategy when installing Facebook apps as you do when you download something to your desktop.
Facebook responds to the BBC with a Q&A:
Click: Is Facebook reconsidering at present its default security settings for applications at a level beyond day-to-day review?
Facebook: We regularly evaluate and adjust the security settings for third party applications to ensure that Facebook’s Terms of Service are not violated.
The full BBC article can be found here and the Full Facebook Q&A can be found here. Remember, social network responsibly.
Popularity: 2% [?]
