editor@thestagsurrey.co.uk ARCHIVE

By Helen Finn

Facebook has been in the news quite a bit and not in a good way. Recently it was revealed that a flaw in the privacy settings of some applications had lead to hundreds of thousands of user accounts to be accessed by advertisers. The security firm Symantec discovered that last month 100,000 applications were providing the means for advertisers to get access tokens. These access tokens acted as “spare keys” according to Symantec's Nishant Doshi. They were given by users with their permission to help the performance of applications. Facebook users will be familiar with the phrase “Allowing [application] access will let it pull your profile information, photos, your friends’ info, and other content that it requires to work.” Most of us just click ‘allow’ without thinking about it, but under the old authentication method, this allowed the spare keys to be accessed by third-parties, many of them for advertising.  Some of these were accidental, but many were intentional. Facebook have since changed their system to OAuth 2.0, a shared open standard co-founded by several sites including Twitter and Google. This is compulsory for new applications but not for old ones – they are merely encouraged to switch to the new system. If you are worried about access by unauthorised third-parties, Symantec advises that you change your passwords. It has also come to light that Facebook entered into a smear campaign to discredit internet giant Google. A public relations firm, Burson-Marsteller, was hired to plant negative stories about Google’s user privacy. Facebook denied that the stories had been planted by Burson-Marsteller but that they were used to uncover activities that "raised privacy concerns" from the Google feature Google Social Search. “Google Social Search helps you discover relevant content from your social connections, a set of your online friends and contacts. Content from your friends and acquaintances is sometimes more relevant and meaningful to you than content from any random person. For example, an online movie review is useful, but a movie review from your best friend can be even better.” Google and Facebook both refused to further comment on this story.