WSJ: Facebook in Online Privacy Breach; Applications Transmitting Identifying Information
The WSJ rakes some muck.
But, this report is just hand wringing. Two big claims are pretty empty:
- The WSJ makes a big deal that user ID numbers are shared, which allow companies access to said account’s name. Names are public in Facebook and IDs aren’t blocked. This task could be more easily done with web scraping (and is) than by paying app developers for it. More likely, user IDs are given for measurement purposes.
- I’d put a large wager that Zynga isn’t sharing user info with advertisers intentionally. First off, Zynga barely deals with advertisers: the only campaigns that work with Zynga are offline. A few sneak in, but they’re mainly in the virtual currency exchange and run by 3rd party vendors. Zynga makes soooo much money purely by selling virtual currency (they’re essentially printing money) they snub advertisers and agencies constantly (personal experience.) They would never intentionally share any non-public data. It would threaten the golden goose.
