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No stranger to privacy concerns, Facebook is one again in in the privacy spotlight following a Wall Street Journal report that some popular Facebook applications leak personal information to advertisers.
"Many of the 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," according to The Wall Street Journal, which wrote about Facebook Sunday in the latest installment of its recent "What They Know" series about advertising and the Internet.
The issue affects "tens of millions of Facebook app users," the Journal writes, "including people who set their profiles to Facebook's strictest privacy settings." Some of the apps cited by the Journal include FarmVille, by the Zynga Game Network, and Texas HoldEm Poker.
The newspaper's assertions come as Facebook faces continuing scrutiny over how well it protects its users' personal data.
Last week, Facebook added a feature through which users can obtain disposable, single-use passwords for using Facebook on public computers. Facebook has also enabled users to see their recent log in activity in the Account Security section, to know where and how their account was recently accessed.
