Since more and more of my friends are obsessed with Facebook Quizzes, please read...

(14:06:03 CDT)

Since more and more of my friends are obsessed with Facebook Quizzes, please read...

More and more of my friends are using lots of Facebook quizzes and other such "one-time" apps. I wanted to point out some information. First, read the article "What Facebook Quizzes Know About You". Then, just to drive the point home, this is taking from Facebook's own overview about applications and what they know about you and your friends. This can be updated at any time and so the wording below may not be accurate, but you can see it and the full policy (below is just snippets) yourself under Settings > Privacy > Applications:

1. Unless an application has been authorised by you or your friends, whenever you or your friends visit an application, Facebook allows it to access only the information that is available in your public search listing (your name, networks, Profile picture and friend list).

2. When you authorise an application, it will be able to access any information associated with your account that it requires to work. The application can access information like your personal info, photos, and notifications as well as your friends' personal info (depending on their settings)...[this does not include e-mail]...All platform applications are obligated to respect all of your existing privacy settings when requesting this information and when displaying it to other users...All applications must respect existing privacy settings. For example, if an application creates a slideshow of your photo albums, and a certain album is set to "Only Friends", it may only display that slideshow to your friends.

AND THIS IS THE BIG KICKER...

3. When a friend of yours visits an application or authorises it, the information that the application can access includes your friend's friend list and information about the people on that list. It can therefore access some information about you.

You can change some settings and prevent them from getting some information from applications that your friends authorize, but as far as I know, if you authorize an application, then you are opening up just about everything on Facebook to the app/quiz writers. Depending on what's on your profile or your settings, you may not care, but I think a lot of people are unaware of this fact and so I wanted to point it out. According to the article, above, Facebook does not have a pre-screening process for application submitters. This means that black hats are only caught after the fact, if then, since a lot of people do not realize they are supposed to be reporting ones they suspect (or even know what to suspect to report).

Si Vales, Valeo

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