http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25108973
This is a link to MSNBC article entitled:
A flashy Facebook page, at a cost to privacy
Add-ons to online social profiles expose personal data to strangers
Below are excerpts from the article ... click the link to read all of it. Do you use facebook or myspace? Do you put the "extra's" on? Will you remove them if you do? Will it change the way you use these sites?
"Everything requires you to give access to personal information or it forces you to ask your friends to do the same — it becomes a real nuisance," said David Dixon, 40, an information technology consultant in Columbia, Va., who recently deleted most of the applications he had downloaded to his Facebook profile after reading on a blog that developers may have access to his information. "Why does a Sudoku puzzle have to know I have two kids? Why does a postcard need to know where I went to college?"
Even private profiles, in which personal details are available only to specific friends, reveal personal information, said Chris Soghoian, a cyber-security researcher at Indiana University. And they're allowing access to their friends' information — even if their friends are not using the application. That's because MySpace and Facebook, the largest online social networks, let outside developers see a member's information when they add a program.
'Vast amounts of information'
"You want to be social with your friends, but now you're giving 20 guys you've never met vast amounts of information from your profile," he said. "That should be troubling to people."
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