Facebook applications data mining your information.

By Value hunter on Feb 16, 2012 | In In real life, On the web, Bad business

Where is your facebook personal information going?
How is your facebook information used?
Which companies are using your facebook information?
Do you trust businesses that are farming your friend's and your personal information?
The short answer, nobody knows where or what is going on with your facebook profile information!

How a facebook application works:
Imagine your facebook page, which runs the any application, as an electronic picture frame, simply a border.
Your facebook application is written, coded, etc, just like this website.
With one exception. You can view the coding for this website. With a facebook application, game, picture changer, etc, you cannot.
The facebook application appears in your electronic picture frame, ie, with your facebook links all around it.
It is running on an entirely seperate website from facebook.
How do you view the coding for it so you know what's going on with information?
Unless you are a computer buff, you can't!

A new facebook friend started using a regular photo app and invited me to use it also.
I attempted to block the photo app from access to my data.
On the first screen giving me a chance to accept or decline the app, it listed all the information it required.

* Full access to my newsfeed, wall, email, photographs, videos and friends.
* Full access to my updates, fan pages and groups that I'd joined.
[Read: Everything I had placed on facebook]

I declined, another screen popped up.

"For the app to work, it will also have access to:"

* My friends list.
* My friend's newsfeeds.
* My friend's pictures and videos.
* My friend's email.
* My friend's groups, fan pages and "like" selections.
* MY friend's walls, profile information and settings.

This can include home and mobile phone numbers, email addresses, personal home addresses, family associations, shopping habits, products you "like"... you get the picture.

Is all this information really neccessary?
I think not.

More alarming, was the facebook application's "Terms and conditions" for anyone using the "service"!
Never, have I seen a more vague and contradictive set of terms and conditions and trust me, I've come across some dodgy ones in my time on this planet.

"We will not sell or pass on your information to any other company [*Notice nothing is said about your friend's information!]"
Two lines later....
"We reserve the right to pass on your information to any of our affiliate, corporate or parent companies"
So what about protection of all my friend's and my data?
"Your data will be stored in a secure way at all times"
A few lines further on...
"We cannot guarantee that your information will be always be stored in areas that are covered by data protection"
Hardly trustworthy is it.
So what about the actual information/pictures, etc.
This becomes their company's property and can be used as they so wish.
Hold on a mo, these are my pictures, my information, my email address, shouldn't they belong to me at all times facebook?

I tracked the facebook application back to the company website to try and learn about the company behind it.
A quick check on the website on which the facebook application is running reveals they have 9 other facebook applications running from the same domain name (website address) all different from the photo application that wanted to mine all this data.
Further digging on the owners of the company reveals they have received millions of dollars in loans to set up the company after they worked in a big corporation, so successful has their business been that they recently paid off their loans early and sold their business to a market leading corporation in their industry.
The industry the company is in, is called "Content Delivery Network" or CDN.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network

Companies in this field are in the business of providing streaming videos, for example, saving server space, faster speeds, etc.
I am presuming their facebook applications business is a sideline?
Hard to though when the company has been sold?

So when you have friends who play games, change photographs, etc, on facebook, using an application, they are already "sharing" your information, pics, etc.
They will have already accepted the terms and conditions of the company running the facebook app.
There are no safeguards, security procedures or legal bodies that can track what your information is being used for and protect it.
Consumer bodies have mentioned about official government offices having access to the information out there, I would suggest tightening up controls and getting a grip on what the private sector are doing in the first instance, BEFORE anymore of our information is shared.

One disturbing point, that will be looked at in the future posts, is facebook's role in all of this.
I use an email address as a secure log in name, to log on to my account with them. I do not expect, or have ever been asked, if this secure email address is/can be distributed to every company that owns and runs a facebook application!