Most of
Facebook's widely used applications are sharing personal data of users
with a number of internet-tracking and advertising firms, which is
a clear violation of the company's own privacy policy, a report by Wall
Street claims.
The social networking website provides access to users' names and, on occasions, the names of users' friends to up to 25 data and advertising companies, according to the Journal. The report says that the issue is having an effect on hundreds of thousands of Facebook users. The Journal discovered that the 10 most widely used Facebook applications, which include Zynga's FarmVille, are transmitting user information to third parties.
Data-gathering company Rapleaf managed to link data acquired from those applications to its own internet users' database, according to report. The San Francisco based company's people search engine provides you access to the name, age as well as social networking affiliations of anybody, provided that you have his or her email address.
The Journal said that Rapleaf transferred some of the data it acquired to third party companies. But Rapleaf claims that the transmission was not deliberate.
Meanwhile, a Facebook official told CNET that the social networking giant is taking measures to "dramatically limit" the sharing of members' personal data with companies such as Rapleaf.
"Our
technical systems have always been complemented by strong policy
enforcement, and we will continue to rely on both to keep people in
control of their information", he said in a statement.
