Facebook’s FarmVille is Taking Your Personal Data to Market

Facebook is once again making headlines when it comes to protecting users’ personal information, however this time the focus is on the apps people are using on the social networking site. Most notably Farmville, which was reported today to be sharing your personal information to other parties which a violation of Facebook’s privacy policy.

Even setting your privacy setting to high may not protect your information, since the breach is connected to your Facebook ID. This works like a social security number for Facebook, allowing access to tracking data for each user. The ID is public and can be used to find anyone on Facebook and while you may have your information blocked, this doesn’t stop businesses from getting your shared data from your friends.

The information is usually anonymous with marketing and research firms only getting the identification number, however in some cases companies will take that information and match it up with profiles gathered through other means. This tracking data can fetch for a pretty penny from advertisers.

When speaking to the Wall Street Journal, a Facebook spokesperson said:

“Our technical systems have always been complemented by strong policy enforcement, and we will continue to rely on both to keep people in control of their information.”

Facebook usually disables apps that violate their policies, however this doesn’t seem to be case with Farmville since the world hasn’t imploded on itself. If Farmville was shutdown you would clearly hear millions of addicted users cry out in agony. It may not come as a surprise to many of you, but many of the games reported to be sharing your data with other businesses are from Zynga. The most popular of which being Texas Hold ‘Em, FrontierVille, Cafe World and Mafia Wars.

It looks like the saga continues in Facebook’s fight to keep users information private. How do you guys feel about Facebook apps passing your data along to third parties?

Source: WSJ