(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-04-30 07:12

"I suspect that there's a whole lot of clicking without a lot of thinking," says Mary Madden, a senior research specialist at the Pew Internet & American Life Project who studies privacy issues.

"So much of this sharing happens in a way that users don't see the consequences. It's kind of a big, black hole."

Part of the risk stems from Facebook applications being created by anyone, some of them tech-related companies and others individuals with know-how. And they could be anywhere in the world, as is Jayant Agarwalla, co-founder of Facebook's popular Scrabulous application, a takeoff on the game Scrabble.

Reached by e-mail, he says Scrabulous does use demographic information to target ads that show up as a person plays the game. But Agarwalla, who is based in India, stresses that that information is provided in "real time" and not stored.

"In my humble opinion, users have nothing to worry about," he says.

Some would argue that it is much like trusting an online vendor with your credit card information.

Still, it is an honor system, says Adrienne Felt, a computer science major at the University of Virginia. A Facebook user herself, she decided to research the site's applications and even created her own so she could see how it worked.

Most of the developers Felt polled said they either did not need or use the information available to them and, if they did, accessed it only for advertising purposes.

But, in the end, Felt says there is really nothing stopping them from matching profile information with public records. It also could be sold or stolen. And all of that could lead to serious matters such as identity theft.

"People seem to have this idea that, when you put something on the Internet, there should be some privacy model out there - that there's somebody out there that's enforcing good manners. But that's not true," Felt says.

Agencies

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