Facebook's apps secretly sending out users' information to third parties.

It has been revealed this last week by the Wall Street Journal that many of the most popular apps on Facebook have been secretly transmitting users' identification information to several Internet tracking companies and advertising firms. The most troubling aspect of the revelation, is that it has happened to even users who have chosen Facebook's strictest privacy settings.
Among the information transmitted, are users' names, gender, age, income level, Online activities and information about their friends too. Most of these information transmitting apps belong to outside developers including some of the most popular game makers like Zynga Game Network Inc.'s FarmVille, and Texas HoldEm Poker and FrontierVille may have violated Faceboook's rules and the social network site has taken action and some of those offending apps have been temporary disabled while the social networking company is looking for a technical solution to turn the loophole.



For more, see WSJ.com

How to opt out of Facebook sharing option.

With the announcement last week by Facebook of the expansion of its "Like" program to other sites, little notice were made of the possible ramifications of such program. The program works by allowing outside participant sites to embed Facebook Like button on their sites. Once embeded, the button will appear on its page of the site and will give Facebook members a chance to click on it when they see something that they like. That seemingly harmless action will have a lot of ramifications since since that one click will essentially broadcast the user action to his or her network through his or her newsfeed. Also, all the names of the user Facebook friends who have already clicked on the button, will be broadcasted alongside.
In conjunction of the new Like program, Facebook has launched a new innovation called Open Graph which is a technology that allows certain sites like Pandora, Yelp, and Docs by Microsoft, to personalize their offerings to users based on the information stored in their personal profiles. That level of personalization is possible because Facebook gives those sites access to those users information. Ant that's where it gets scary for unscrupulous users who unwillingly may be giving away access to their personal information.
As you may have noticed, the opt-in option is by default and users who do not want their information accessed that way, have the means to opt-out.
You can either turn Instant Personalization off entirely at Facebook, or you can opt out at individual websites on a case-by-case basis. The latter is easy; the first time you arrive at a website that uses Instant Personalization, a bar will appear at the top of the page letting you know that’s what’s happening and giving you the option to either accept that or not.
To opt out of the personalization feature altogether, you can do so by going to Facebook home page, access your "Account" and click on "Privacy Settings."

For more, see the Hardfordinformer.com

How to make some photos on Facebook visible to only certain people?

If you have some pictures on Facebook that you would like to make visible only to a limited number of people, fortunately, there is a way to do just that. The place to start, would be the privacy settings on the site.
From there, these are the steps to follow according to the New York Times:
1-Go to the Photos section on your profile page and click the "See All" link to bring up a list of all your photo albums;
2-Click the "Album Privacy" link and go to the album you wish to restrict;
3-Select "Customize" from the drop-down menu;
4-Click the button for "Some Friends" and type the names of friends with whom you'd like to share these particular pictures.
Another way to do it is by choosing to display a limited version of your profile page to certain people.
Here are the steps to achieve that still according to the New York Times:
1-Click the "Privacy " link at the top of your profile page to get to the settings for adding select information to the limited version of your Facebook profile;
2-Once the limited profile is defined, click on the Friends link; viewership
3-Click on the Limited Profile on the right side of the screen to add the names of friends whom you want to see the censured version of your online profile.
All these features and many more privacy features like a new one called "Friends of Friends", are explained in details in the Facebook blog.


For more, see NYTimes.com

Facebook new privacy settings.

Faced with growing criticisms, Facebook is testing means that will give back users, more control over their data. To achieve that, Facebook is focusing on simplifying its privacy settings which count 4o different options spread over six pages.
The simplified privacy settings being tested right now among a limited number of users, consist mainly of "new controls that will allow members to specify which groups or individuals are able to see each text update, photo or video they post on the site" according to the New York Times.
Ultimately, the changes are meant to make people feel more comfortable in sharing data, knowing that they have control over who can and who can not see it. As for a general release of the new settings, no date yet has been set.

For more, see Businessweek.com