data mining without consent?

The Facebook craze sees many "ditching" Friendster for seemingly better and wider social networking pursuits. No doubt with applications such as the Email Friend Finder and Friend Suggestion, we get to be in touch with many whom we really know and matters. Albeit there are still the occasional strangers who add us for the sake of amplifying their matter of fact minute original network or god knows, hidden agendas, it again SEEMS as though we have control to contain and maintain our page. Or do we?

The tens and hundreds of application invitations scream for us to accept and 'beautify' our page. Sometimes, it gets too overwhelming we just delete them without bother looking at its content. Moreover, the hassle of registering the application following the routined cycle of inviting friends to accept our request of the same application can be another rather turning off factor. Why then bother to create many more applications by the day and overloading millions of pages with invitations?

"A Flashy Facebook Page, at a Cost to Privacy"

Some of the things written in this Washington Post article:

Those mini-programs, called widgets or applications, allow users to personalize their pages and connect with friends and acquaintances. But they could pose privacy risks. Some security researchers warn that developers of the software have assembled too much information --home town, schools attended, employment history -- and can use the data in ways that could harm or annoy users.

When a user installs one (program) on Facebook, which has 70 million members, the developer can see everything in a profile...and developers are allowed to keep those data for only 24 hours.

But it is often difficult to tell when developers are breaking the rules by, for example, storing members' data for more than 24 hours, said Adrienne Felt, who recently studied Facebook security at the University of Virginia.

She examined 150 of the most popular Facebook applications to find out how much data could be gathered. Her research, which was presented at a privacy conference last month, found that about 90 percent of the applications have unnecessary access to private data.

"Once the information is on a third-party server, Facebook can't do anything about it," she said.

Revealing information on quizzes or maps of places visited, for instance, may also make it easier for strangers to piece together tidbits to create larger security threats, said Alessandro Acquisti, assistant professor of public policy and information systems at Carnegie Mellon University. Some online activities ask users to list pets' names or to display their high school's mascot, answers to common security questions asked by financial companies.

"Nowadays, some people have downloaded so many [applications], it's a constant flow of information about what they've done, what they're doing, which can be mined by your friends and also by someone you don't know anything about," he said.

You can read the whole article here.

Since reading this, I have in fact taken down many of the applications I've once installed out of naivety. So my friends, think twice before we download more applications in Facebook. Yes, it is addictive and yes, it is still subject to own perspective of what you want to make up of this article. I am just here to share.

At the end of the day, nicely summed up in one of the comments:
"The internet will always be used by both good and bad people for different purposes. If you intentionally give your personal information away, you don't deserve privacy."