Several Social Networks Transmit User Data to Advertisers
The Wall Street Journal has published this morning a revelation that astonished everybody, saying that most social networks including Facebook, MySpace, LiveJournal, Hi5, Xanga, and Digg are sending their users data to advertisers without consent to identify those who click on their ads.
Whenever any user click on an advertisement, advertising companies including Google’s DoubleClick and Yahoo’s Right Media receives the address where and when the user have clicked on their advertisement. Facebook went farther by sending profile ID and also Username to the advertiser networks that can be traced back to your page on the social network and all the data that you share publicly in your profile, generally your name, age, address, email, telephone number etc. Other social networks named here other than Facebook, send only profile ID to the advertisers, but not username.
Before publishing, the Wall Street Journal has alerted the social networks about the flaw and most have corrected their code as much as they could do. According to the newspaper, Facebook have at least partly corrected its code since Thursday morning.
However, both Google and Yahoo strongly denied that they are receiving and using such kind of data. But this case is the last of a long series of holes in the privacy of Facebook and other social networks. Perhaps one more reason for many to leave Facebook.
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