Often times many of us who are accustomed to the digital era often take our privacy for granted. A site such as Facebook holds data that could, if mishandled, be used to exploit issues in our everyday lives. Most of us would not think twice about trusting these companies with our information, yet according to an investigation conducted by the Wall Street Journal, Facebook may actually be sharing our information with third party developers.
If you step back and look at the privacy policy of Facebook, they claim to "not permit access to anyone's private information on Facebook." While this may have some truth to it, the report reveals that they actually transmit our Facebook user id which can be used to access any part of our public profile. This means that a simple google search with our name will reveal the id, thus delinking our once thought anonymous profile ID. While Facebook isn't technically lying, the information they share and sell easily can be linked with anything available in your public profile.
While this investigation certainly raised questions as to what Facebook is doing with our data, we have to wonder whether other sites follow similar practices. Most of us are already aware that many companies use browser cookies and other tactics to trace and better target individuals. In an area that is relatively new it seems appropriate to question who is responsible for keeping our information safe. It certainly will be interesting to watch how things play out.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304772804575558484075236968.html
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