Facebook Apps Privacy Breach: Jealous Conspiracy Or Marketing Tool?

Facebook In Privacy Breach

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.

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.

"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.

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."



Sources: Wall Street Journal, CNN, Facebook, MSNBC, Washington Post, Youtube, Google Maps

Pres. Obama Gathers Data From The Web & His Advisers

In Obama's Decision-Making, A Wide Range Of Influences


During one of his Afghan review meetings last year, President Obama surprised senior advisers by jumping into a discussion between two military officials about a new study of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The flow of information to the president is usually carefully managed, and no one in the room had briefed Obama on the data. "It's not like we'd sent him the study, but he'd clearly seen it," one adviser said. "It was telling."

What it told of was a president who persists in seeking his own information, beyond what is offered to him. His lawyerly and orderly reliance on facts and data often has created an impression that Obama is cool and detached.

It is an image his advisers and friends reject. Instead, they paint a more nuanced and at times blurred portrait of a president who is deeply moved by the struggles of average citizens who stand up at town hall meetings or write thousands of letters to the White House -- 10 of which he reads each day.

When he turns to solving problems through policy, he reveres facts, calling for data and then more data. He looks for historical analogues and reads voraciously.

"This is someone who in law school worked with [Harvard professor] Larry Tribe on a paper on the legal implications of Einstein's theory of relativity," said senior adviser David M. Axelrod. "He does have an incisive mind; that mind is always put to use in pursuit of tangible things that are going to improve people's lives."

What influences this president, as he starts a second year in office and addresses the state of the union to an increasingly anxious public and restive Congress? What does he read? To whom does he turn for advice? For solace? For unfiltered information?

He has a wife who speaks her mind, and Michelle Obama has far more interaction with everyday Americans, especially military families. The first lady, a senior adviser said, is "his sounding board, his critic, his talk-things-through person, but it's a very private thing."

Obama leans on the trusted Chicago hands he has known for years -- Axelrod, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett in particular. His political strategists conduct polling constantly, but it has little discernible impact.

"If he was poll-driven, we'd be doing better," one senior adviser said ruefully, adding, "but the country would be in a depression."

The president is affected above all by the calendar, which limits what he can accomplish before the White House must shift into reelection mode. That political reality has lent his first year in office a sense of urgency.

The Internet (and mainstream media, too)

Obama is the first truly wired president, the first to have Internet access at his desk and to converse regularly via e-mail. This fingertip access sends him "constantly" online, said one senior adviser, and the information he finds there influences his thinking and some of his deliberations. He also "uses the Internet like a normal adult," said another aide, "reading news articles, checking sports scores."

As for what Obama reads online, his advisers said he looks for offbeat blogs and news stories, tracking down firsthand reporting and seeking out writers with opinions about his policies. Obama was particularly interested in Atlantic Online's Andrew Sullivan's tweeting of the Iranian elections last year, said an aide, who requested anonymity to discuss what influences the president.

When they spoke for attribution, administration officials played down the notion of a Googling commander in chief.

"I don't think time permits him to be surfing all the time," Axelrod said, adding that the president reads "magazines like crazy," including the New Yorker, the Economist, Sports Illustrated and Rolling Stone. "There are some commentators whose views he's interested in, and he'll read blog items."

"Periodically, I mention to him articles that I have found particularly interesting, and that he might find interesting, and a very high fraction of the time he has already read them and has some kind of reaction," economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers said.

Across the administration, people who work closely with the president said he remains fond of his BlackBerry and communicates directly, rather than running everything through his chief of staff. He sometimes sends e-mails late at night, an updated version of the late-night phone calls to the brain trust that President Bill Clinton used to place.

Obama watches plenty of television, too. He flips through cable channels, sometimes lingering on the "cable chatter" he has disdained in public, aides said. And he keeps an eye on his staff, including press secretary Robert Gibbs, whose daily briefings are broadcast live on C-Span. "Certainly he will catch Robert's briefings," former communications director Anita Dunn said. "He'll say, 'Robert, I just saw you getting asked X.' "

But Valerie Jarrett, the adviser who is personally closest with Obama, cautioned against over-interpreting his channel surfing. "Most of his television revolves around [ESPN's] 'SportsCenter.' I don't think there are a lot of television shows he gets inspiration from other than sports," she said, laughing.

His Critics

In early December, Obama invited a group of business people to the White House for a jobs summit, and Paul Krugman made the list. The Nobel Prize-winning New York Times columnist at times has been one of Obama's toughest critics on the left.

Whereas most journalists are brought in to see the president in order to try to shape a news story, the private meeting between Krugman and Obama was something of a policy debate on the economy and health care, although aides would not disclose details. Obama, said one aide, was grateful to have the "intellectual challenge" of an adversary who would help refine his own thinking.

"He likes the rigor of having a conversation with someone who's going to push him," Jarrett said. "There's really no point in him wasting time with people who simply agree with him all the time, because it's not going to refine his position. It's not going to enlighten his position." She added: "Also, then Paul gets to hear an opinion different than his own, too."

It remains to be seen whether the president's opinions have swayed the columnist. In a recent blog posting, Krugman said he is "pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in."

Obama also seeks out rival views among his staff to whatever idea is on the table. During one economic session, his advisers were all on the same page; that annoyed Obama, and he sent them out of the room with a request to return with a dissenting view, a participant said. What ensued resembled a debate club meeting.

"He wants advisers who have different perspectives to share those differing perspectives," Summers said. "And he is very careful to ask people who haven't spoken up whether they have a perspective they want to share."

Colin Powell (and other eminences grises)

Obama met quietly several times during the campaign with retired Gen. Colin Powell, who ultimately crossed party lines to endorse him. Since the election, Powell has seen Obama at the White House about four times, aides said, sometimes slipping in for meetings without the knowledge of top National Security Council staff members.

What do the men discuss? Powell declined to say. But he described Obama's demeanor in examining problems as thorough and precise.

"He's a lawyer, and he thinks like a lawyer, makes decisions like a lawyer," Powell said in an interview. "He likes to pick apart an argument, and I appreciate that."

Obama values Powell's status as an elder statesman who is unfazed by stepping into the Oval Office, senior aides said. Powell played an important role last fall in helping the president not be bowed by his critics, such as former vice president Richard B. Cheney, who accused Obama of "dithering" on his Afghan policy.

"There are people who are very wise, very experienced and very sensible, and I think for the president, General Powell fits that category," Axelrod said. "I don't think he's in constant contact with him, but at pivotal moments, he's reached out to him as a sounding board, as he's had to make some difficult decisions."

Other prominent figures who White House aides said also fit that category: the financier Warren Buffett, a member of the Washington Post Board of Directors, and Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick. The Catholic former archbishop of Washington has had several private and sometimes unreported meetings, talking with the president about the Middle East and health care.

Regular People

The president has retold their stories so often they are now familiar figures around the White House: the Green Bay, Wis., woman with breast cancer who is worried that her health insurance's lifetime cap will kick in soon. The small-business owner who could not get a bank loan, despite having a solid business plan. The family facing foreclosure because the bank would not modify a mortgage loan. Aides say time and time again, at meetings, Obama brings up these stories, which sometimes affect policy.

"I don't think you can overstate -- or should not underestimate -- the degree to which his interactions with people, letters, interchanges, motivate him in all of this," Axelrod said.

After Obama met Laura Klitzka in Green Bay, he returned to the White House and recounted her struggles, as a way to motivate aides who had grown pessimistic about the prospects for health-care changes. Another time, Obama carried onboard Air Force One the letter from the small-business owner frustrated by his inability to get a loan. The tale was woven into the fabric of Obama's small-business policies, Jarrett said, leading to changes in the administration's lending initiatives.

"It wasn't some economic scholar who was presenting the idea. The problem was identified by an everyday American," Jarrett said.

At times, he has turned the Treasury Department into a Better Business Bureau, demanding that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner respond to -- and help fix -- problems reported by his citizen letter-writers.

"The president will turn to Geithner at the beginning of a meeting and say, 'Did you check into those?' " Dunn said. When it came to loan modifications, Obama would cite everyday anecdotes to counter advisers' assertions that the problems had been fixed. When it came to letters about foreclosures, Dunn said, Obama said more than once: "I get too many of these."

The focus on Obama's dispassionate demeanor is one that frustrates his advisers, who are privy to his more emotional side.

"Part of what's painful to me is to see people describe him as cool and aloof, when he's not at all," Jarrett said. "It's just simply that he has the strength and courage to not let those emotions throw him off course."

After a middle-of-the-night trip to Dover Air Force Base to receive the bodies of fallen soldiers, Obama was both moved and disturbed, said advisers who talked with him about it. The speech he delivered a short time later at West Point announcing a 30,000-troop increase in Afghanistan was also "very emotional," Jarrett said.

"He talked to us all about the trip to Dover and coming back at 4 in the morning, and just how hard that was," she said. "But he couldn't let that interfere with making a decision that he thought was best for the American people. And I think that's a quality you want in a president. You don't want a president who's going to be so shaken by the magnitude of the decision that they can't make the right decision."

Or, as Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) put it: "When people talk about him being cerebral, my point is, what's wrong with that?"


Sources: Washington Post, Telegraph.co.uk