Warning: Be careful when using Facebook apps & games
With social networking being so widely used by people of all ages & walks of life these days, security has become an increasingly worrying issue, especially on Facebook.
However, not everyone who uses the likes of Facebook, understands which information they are freely giving away to third party app & game developers or organisations.
Who reads privacy statements and terms & conditions in full thesedays anyway? Often they are so lengthy and contain so much legal jargon that means it would take far too long to read & make any real sense of.
In fact, I suspect a very small number of people actually read these t&c’s or privacy statements at all.
Why you should be careful when using Facebook apps & games
This recent news bulletin posted by The Hacker News should be taken as a serious warning to all Facebook users who use apps and games on Facebook.
Think before granting permission to Facebook apps & games to access your information. Whilst Facebook do not openly (or knowingly) allow your password or login details to be given to app or game developers, the recent post by The Hacker News would suggest programmers have somehow found a way to extract users passwords, after they’ve granted access to their information.
There are some great apps & games available on Facebook, made by some top developers from all around the world, but let’s not forget – anyone is allowed to create a Facebook app. Do you mind handing over your personal information to someone you don’t know or that nobody’s ever heard of? Personally, I’d like to keep my personal information as personal as possible – especially my online password(s)!
Think of your friends, colleagues, & contacts when using Facebook apps
This is another increasingly worrying thing about using Facebook apps & games – without willingly or knowingly doing so, you can spread nasty apps or links to your Facebook contacts. This can be done by you authorising/ using a Facebook app, ‘liking’ a web-page, or in some cases by simply clicking a link found on Facebook.
Before you know it, your Facebook contacts see your activity in their news feed and do the same. I’m sure by now you understand how quickly things can happen on Facebook!
Just over a week ago, the death of Osama Bin Laden was used as an online war tool to virally distribute malware via Facebook. When a user visited a link (which I’ll not post for security reasons), it would automatically post the link to your Facebook profile as an update with the title ‘Osama EXECUTION video’. This would then be shown to all your Facebook contacts in their news feed, and would automatically post to their profile pages or in some cases, send as an instant chat message. It doesn’t take a genius to understand how this soon spiralled out of control across Facebook & the web.
What can you do to protect yourself against malicious Facebook apps & games?
Our simple advice is this – do not grant access to third party Facebook apps if the developer or organisation which created the app (or game) is unheard of – you may regret it later if you do. Use your common sense – if you’re unsure, do not grant permission to access your information. And lastly – don’t be so gullible with everything you read on Facebook. You should never grant permission to an app in order to watch a video.
To view which apps you have already granted access to your personal information, from your Facebook profile, click on:
Account >> Privacy settings >> Apps and websites (Edit your settings). Then click the ‘edit your settings’ button and you can revoke access to whichever apps you wish. If you find some apps there that leave you worried, only AFTER revoking access should you change your Facebook password.
And lastly, remember: No Facebook application will ever ask you to enter your password, so if one ever does- walk away immediately and report it to Facebook.
If you have any further advice or information on this subject, please leave a comment below.
Note: image used is for illustration purposes only. FarmVille is a very-well known Facebook app from a respected organisation.
