Archive for category Media
Trouble at Farmville – Facebook Slaughter
Posted by James in Facebook News, Media, Social Media Marketing on October 19, 2010
Great article from wsj online (the web arm of the Wall Street Journal) highlighting some more privacy issues. I have taken the liberty of reproducing it in full. It’s long, but it’s a good read. Enjoy.
By EMILY STEEL And GEOFFREY A. FOWLER, Wall Street Journal
Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some cases, their friends’ names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.
The issue affects tens of millions of Facebook app users, including people who set their profiles to Facebook’s strictest privacy settings. The practice breaks Facebook’s rules, and renews questions about its ability to keep identifiable information about its users’ activities secure.
Facebook says it is taking steps to “dramatically limit” the exposure of users’ personal information, after a WSJ investigation showed that personal IDs were being transmitted to third parties via Facebook apps.
The problem has ties to the growing field of companies that build detailed databases on people in order to track them online—a practice the Journal has been examining in its What They Know series. It’s unclear how long the breach was in place. On Sunday, a Facebook spokesman said it is taking steps to “dramatically limit” the exposure of users’ personal information.
Many top applications on Facebook have been transmitting identifying information to Internet tracking and ad companies. Emily Steel discusses. Also, Michael Ramsey discusses skepticism about the auto industry’s big bet that battery-powered cars will become big sellers.
“A Facebook user ID may be inadvertently shared by a user’s Internet browser or by an application,” the spokesman said. Knowledge of an ID “does not permit access to anyone’s private information on Facebook,” he said, adding that the company would introduce new technology to contain the problem identified by the Journal.
“Our technical systems have always been complemented by strong policy enforcement, and we will continue to rely on both to keep people in control of their information,” the Facebook official said.
“Apps” are pieces of software that let Facebook’s 500 million users play games or share common interests with one another. The Journal found that all of the 10 most popular apps on Facebook were transmitting users’ IDs to outside companies.
The apps, ranked by research company Inside Network Inc. (based on monthly users), include Zynga Game Network Inc.’s FarmVille, with 59 million users, and Texas HoldEm Poker and FrontierVille. Three of the top 10 apps, including FarmVille, also have been transmitting personal information about a user’s friends to outside companies.
Most apps aren’t made by Facebook, but by independent software developers. Several apps became unavailable to Facebook users after the Journal informed Facebook that the apps were transmitting personal information; the specific reason for their unavailability remains unclear.
The information being transmitted is one of Facebook’s basic building blocks: the unique “Facebook ID” number assigned to every user on the site. Since a Facebook user ID is a public part of any Facebook profile, anyone can use an ID number to look up a person’s name, using a standard Web browser, even if that person has set all of his or her Facebook information to be private. For other users, the Facebook ID reveals information they have set to share with “everyone,” including age, residence, occupation and photos.
The apps reviewed by the Journal were sending Facebook ID numbers to at least 25 advertising and data firms, several of which build profiles of Internet users by tracking their online activities.
Defenders of online tracking argue that this kind of surveillance is benign because it is conducted anonymously. In this case, however, the Journal found that one data-gathering firm, RapLeaf Inc., had linked Facebook user ID information obtained from apps to its own database of Internet users, which it sells. RapLeaf also transmitted the Facebook IDs it obtained to a dozen other firms, the Journal found.
Name Games
All 10 of the top Facebook apps transmitted users’ IDs, The Journal found
RapLeaf said that transmission was unintentional. “We didn’t do it on purpose,” said Joel Jewitt, vice president of business development for RapLeaf.
Facebook said it previously has “taken steps … to significantly limit Rapleaf’s ability to use any Facebook-related data.”
Facebook prohibits app makers from transferring data about users to outside advertising and data companies, even if a user agrees. The Journal’s findings shed light on the challenge of policing those rules for the 550,000 apps on its site.
The Journal’s findings are the latest challenge for Facebook, which has been criticized in recent years for modifying its privacy rules to expose more of a user’s information. This past spring, the Journal found that Facebook was transmitting the ID numbers to advertising companies, under some circumstances, when a user clicked on an ad. Facebook subsequently discontinued the practice.
“This is an even more complicated technical challenge than a similar issue we successfully addressed last spring on Facebook.com,” a Facebook spokesman said, “but one that we are committed to addressing.”
The privacy issue follows Facebook’s effort just this month to give its users more control over its apps, which privacy activists had cited as a potential hole in users’ ability to control who sees their information. On Oct. 6, Facebook created a control panel that lets users see which apps are accessing which categories of information about them. It indicates, for example, when an application accesses a user’s “basic information” (including a user ID and name). However, it doesn’t detail what information friends’ applications have accessed about a user.
Facebook apps transform Facebook into a hub for all kinds of activity, from playing games to setting up a family tree. Apps are considered an important way for Facebook to extend the usefulness of its network. The company says 70% of users use apps each month.
Applications are also a growing source of revenue beyond advertising for Facebook itself, which sells its own virtual currency that can be used to pay for games.
Following an investigation by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner, Facebook in June limited applications to accessing only the public parts of a user’s profile, unless the user grants additional permission. (Canadian officials later expressed satisfaction with Facebook’s steps.) Previously, applications could tap any data the user had access to, including detailed profiles and information about a user’s friends.
It’s not clear if developers of many of the apps transmitting Facebook ID numbers even knew that their apps were doing so. The apps were using a common Web standard, known as a “referer,” which passes on the address of the last page viewed when a user clicks on a link. On Facebook and other social-networking sites, referers can expose a user’s identity.
The company says it has disabled thousands of applications at times for violating its policies. It’s unclear how many, if any, of those cases involved passing user information to marketing companies.
Facebook also appeared to have shut down some applications the Journal found to be transmitting user IDs, including several created by LOLapps Media Inc., a San Francisco company backed with $4 million in venture capital. LOLapp’s applications include Gift Creator, with 3.5 million monthly active users, Quiz Creator, with 1.4 million monthly active users, Colorful Butterflies and Best Friends Gifts.
Since Friday, users attempting to access those applications received either an error message or were reverted to Facebook’s home screen.
“We have taken immediate action to disable all applications that violate our terms,” a Facebook spokesman said.
A spokeswoman for LOLapps Media declined to comment.
The applications transmitting Facebook IDs may have breached their own privacy policies, as well as industry standards, which say sites shouldn’t share and advertisers shouldn’t collect personally identifiable information without users’ permission. Zynga, for example, says in its privacy policy that it “does not provide any Personally Identifiable Information to third-party advertising companies.”
A Zynga spokeswoman said, “Zynga has a strict policy of not passing personally identifiable information to any third parties. We look forward to working with Facebook to refine how web technologies work to keep people in control of their information.”
The most expansive use of Facebook user information uncovered by the Journal involved RapLeaf. The San Francisco company compiles and sells profiles of individuals based in part on their online activities.
The Journal found that some LOLapps applications, as well as the Family Tree application, were transmitting users’ Facebook ID numbers to RapLeaf. RapLeaf then linked those ID numbers to dossiers it had previously assembled on those individuals, according to RapLeaf. RapLeaf then embedded that information in an Internet-tracking file known as a “cookie.”
RapLeaf says it strips out the user’s name when it embeds the information in the cookie and shares that information for ad targeting. However, The Wall Street Journal found that RapLeaf transmitted Facebook user IDs to a dozen other advertising and data firms, including Google Inc.’s Invite Media.
All 12 companies said that they didn’t collect, store or use the information.
Ilya Nikolayev, chief executive of Familybuilder, maker of the Family Tree application, said in an email, “It is Familybuilder’s corporate policy to keep any actual, potential, current or prior business partnerships, relationships, customer details, and any similar information confidential. As this story relates to a company other than Familybuilder, we have nothing further to contribute.”
Write to Emily Steel at emily.steel@wsj.com and Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com
Social Media Success Summit 2010 and a Tadpole Comes of Age
Posted by James in Glass Frog, Hints and Tips, Internet Marketing, Media, Social Media Marketing on June 9, 2010
What a month of information we had in May.
The Social Media Success Summit was in full swing and to be frank, I am still trying to absorb the wealth of information that was given out over two very intensive weeks.
The seminar revealed some real cutting-edge stuff; applications and methodologies that haven’t even raised their heads above the parapet in the UK.
Thankfully the seminar provided transcripts, slides, audio and video to revise , reabsorb and act on and this is the state of play with the Images team now; to pick over these pearls of wisdom, select the most appropriate for our clients then find ways to apply them to our other marketing activities.
Glass Frog?
You may have seen some obtuse references on these pages to ‘Glass Frog’. Well, the tadpole that was the Glass Frog is about to turn into the full blown adult version. Glass Frog is the name of our new company, that will focus more on New Media Marketing, all aspects of Social Media Marketing, and a whole raft of promotional and viral systems designed to increase your company profile, its footfall (physical and virtual) and ultimately profitability.
We have been around since 1994, through many ups and downs in the economy, and feel that while the current Government is promising us all cuts in services, this really presents a great opportunity for SMEs to really show the bigger guns how to perform.
If service cuts, which naturally means lesser and poorer services for all, don’t you think that the people out there will flock to an organisation that delivers an even higher level of service?
There has never been a better time to blow your own and there have never been as many tools to blow it with.
If you would like to know how we can help your reputation achieve 5 star status, drop us an email to fivestar@theimagesgroup.co.uk or call us on 0191 5197278, and we can arrange a time where we can meet with you over a cup of coffee in our downstairs Bistro and give you a free, no-obligation, one-hour consultation on how to create an exceptional company.
To Your Success
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