Thursday, August 27, 2009

Facebook quizzes reveal more than you think

Facebook quizzes are not only annoying, they can potentially reveal private information to the quiz developers.
The Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has put together a campaign to raise awareness of privacy issues surrounding Facebook applications, in particular quizzes. According to this group, the millions of Facebook users taking quizzes are revealing far more personal information to application developers than they are aware of. This is mostly due to the fact that Facebook's default privacy settings allow access to all your profile information whether or not your profile is set to "private." Even worse, the ACLU reports that even if you shun quizzes yourself, your profile info is revealed when one of your friends takes a quiz. Want to see how bad the problem is? Just take the ACLU's Facebook Quiz and prepared to be shocked.
Wow. So if you find out what Harry Potter character you are, then the quiz developer can know just about everything that is on Facebook. No matter your settings.

(Tip o' the hat to Trip for the catch... on Facebook no less)

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