Facebook’s latest privacy gaffe – allowing its users’ IDs to slip out to advertisers via third party apps – is not as unusual as you might think.
A year ago, researchers found that 11 of 12 social networks allowed user IDs to leak (only Google’s Orkut passed the test.) Linked with the behavioural information that third party ad servers collect, these IDs can become a “magic key” to unlock a user’s real identity, says Peter Eckersley of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Last month, another study found that as many as two thirds of 30 randomly selected Android apps were passing personal information to advertisers.
My Inside Business column in Thursday’s Financial Times takes a closer look at the risks that these social networking and smartphone platforms are running if they don’t put an end to the “leakages”.
