Electronically Obsessed A tech addict's guide to using the Internet to streamline your life

How to control the info your Facebook friends share about you

Keep your Friends' Facebook applications from accessing your information (istockphoto)

If you logged on to Facebook in the last week or so, you probably saw some dialog box about how Facebook has revised their privacy settings.  And, as many people did, you probably just clicked through the dialog boxes and went about your business.  Many other articles on the Internet cover in great detail how you should probably set your Facebook privacy settings.

Today, I want to talk about a specific Facebook privacy issue:

Did you know that what your friends do on Facebook might expose information in your entire Facebook profile to other parties?

On June 11, 2009, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) posted a troubling blog entry about the ubiquitous Facebook quizzes.  I know you've seen these things:

Which comic book character do you most resemble?

Who's your favorite superhero?

What do you know about <insert name here>?

If you take one of these quizzes, the quiz may grant the quiz developer full access to your profile, regardless of your privacy settings. More troubling is this:

The quizzes collect information from the quiz taker's profile, but might access information in the quiz taker's friends' profiles as well.  This means that even if you didn't take a quiz, but one of your friends did, your information may be accessible by the quiz administrator, if you don't set your privacy settings to prevent this.

Action Items: What can you do to protect your data from access by your friends' applications?

1. From your Facebook Profile, bring up the "Settings" pull-down menu and select "Privacy Settings"
2. Select "Edit Settings" under "What your friends can share about you."
3. Uncheck all of the boxes next to information that you do not wish to share through your friends' applications.
4. Comment below or send me an e-mail about your experiences and concerns with social networking privacy!

The following is the paragraph on the "What your friends can share about you" screen:

What your friends can share about you through applications and websites

When your friend visits a Facebook-enhanced application or website, they may want to share certain information to make the experience more social. For example, a greeting card application may use your birthday information to prompt your friend to send a card.

If your friend uses an application that you do not use, you can control what types of information the application can access. Please note that applications will always be able to access your publicly available information (Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages) and information that is visible to Everyone. [Emphasis added]

If you don't want these applications to access your publicly available information, you must make sure you lock down those settings too.  Here's an article that explains how to do that.

Clarification Edit (12/22/09): There is no way to prevent these applications from accessing your publicly available information.  If you don't want these applications accessing your information, you must hide that information from public view.  Hopefully, Facebook will change this soon.

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