By Erin Harrison, Senior Editor
Under scrutiny for lax – or even broken – privacy policies, it has been uncovered that several popular social networking sites have been sharing personal data with advertising companies, despite a policy that says information is not shared without consent.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that “the practice, which most of the companies defended, sends user names or ID numbers tied to personal profiles being viewed when users click on ads. After questions were raised by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook (News – Alert) and MySpace moved to make changes. By Thursday morning Facebook had rewritten some of the offending computer code,” the article said.
After yet another round of warnings found on Facebook status updates far and wide, Facebook last week announced that it is adding additional measures to make sure its members aren’t the victims of security breaches.
As TMCnet’s Alice Straight reported, users can ask to be notified by e-mail or text message if their account is accessed from a computer or mobile device that hasn’t been used before.
The social networking site is also adding roadblocks when it notices unusual activity – users might be shown a photo with friends tagged, and be asked to correctly identify who they are before the second log-in goes through.
In a feature similar to one available on Google (News – Alert) Inc.’s Gmail service Facebook users will also be able to check where the latest log-ins have come from.
On May 13, following yet another change to their privacy settings, Facebook has called a sudden company-wide meeting to address the criticism they have received for their ongoing series of privacy changes.
TMCnet recently reported, with the recent Facebook privacy glitch, it seems social media sites are now, more than offer, suffering from some unfortunate errors within their systems, especially now that these sites are becoming more and more trafficked.
Erin Harrison is a senior editor with TMCnet, primarily covering telecom expense management, politics and technology and Web 2.0. She serves as senior editor for TMC’s (News – Alert) print publications, including “Internet Telephony”, “Customer Interaction Solutions”, “Unified Communications” and “NGN” magazines. Erin also oversees production of TMCnet’s weekly iPhone (News – Alert) e-Newsletter. To read more of Erin’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Erin Harrison
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