Facebook game apps like FarmVille and Texas Hold 'Em Poker collect users' IDs and personal data, then share it with advertisers and marketers even when privacy settings are set to private, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Identity-theft expert Robert Siciliano warns that cookies and third-party sites build detailed profiles used for targeted marketing.
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New security concerns for Facebook users.
10 of the site's most popular apps have been handing out users' private information. Ahead at 10, I'll talk with an expert on identity theft about how you can protect yourself when you're updating and posting on Facebook. If you're not using Facebook, you definitely know someone who is. 500 million people, half a billion people, have Facebook accounts. And according to the Wall Street Journal, some of Facebook's most popular game apps are sharing user information to third-party companies, and it happens even when users set their accounts to private. Joining me now to explain what is happening and how we can protect ourselves is Robert Siciliano. He's an identity theft expert with McAfee. Robert, thanks a lot for joining us tonight. Thank you. People are crazy about these games. Some of the games— Farmville, Texas Hold 'Em Poker— people are just crazy about them. They're playing them. You see them all the time on the wall. I've hit a high score. It gets kind of annoying reading all these updates from people. But these are the apps that are sharing information. Can you explain to us what exactly is taking place here?
So in these apps, we're providing a certain amount of personal identifying information, our Facebook user ID, and these apps are sharing this information with other apps and also with advertisers and marketers. And the Wall Street Journal has revealed that this information about us is being— leaving the privacy settings, it's going beyond the privacy settings and being sold, and we basically have a dollar amount on our heads.
Now, I don't play any games on Facebook. I pretty much just post and read and post and read, but I could still be at risk of having my information shared with a third party, right?
So even if you have your privacy settings locked down to fully private, uh, but you're playing these games, these games may not have the same privacy settings as Facebook does, which means that your friends and some of your personal information is also being shared with, again, advertisers and marketers.
All right, so why should we be concerned about this? Why is this a problem?
Well, here we are with— in a situation a situation where Facebook has gone from, you know, less than 20 million users 5 years ago to 500 million users today. I mean, they are basically the third largest country behind China and India.
That's amazing.
They really are. And the buzz today is, is Facebook evil or are they incompetent? And the reality is, is that they're overwhelmed. And that being said, the security in place isn't sufficient for the user in regards to their personal privacy. So if you're sharing data that you'd rather not the world see, then you need to, you know, kind of curtail that information and recognize that it can get out regardless of what your privacy settings are.
So how do you protect yourself then? Is there any way to protect yourself and protect your privacy is really what I'm talking about?
So I've always felt that if you're on social media at any level, that you're pretty much, you know, you're sharing your data with the world. If you recognize this and don't want to share your information with the world, again, lock down your privacy settings and maybe consider not playing a bunch of different games. But, you know, hey, uh, we give up a little bit of privacy to get a little something, but in the end, um, the data is being used for sales and marketing, curtailed and customized to you. It's not going to hurt you, but it's something that you should be aware of.
And it continues beyond Facebook. We're almost out of time, but we want to make that point. It's not just Facebook that we're dealing with. It's when you leave Facebook and go on to Google and some of these other popular sites our information is also getting shared.
Data ends up on websites, that ends up on cookies in your machine, that gets sent to all these other websites you visit. A whole profile is made about you, and advertisers and marketers are fully aware of who you are.
All right, Big Brother is watching. Robert Siciliano from McAfee, thanks a lot for joining us. Thank you. Maria.
