Podcast: Facebook Flap Highlights Growing Privacy Concerns

In the Podcast I listened to called "Facebook Flap Highlights Growing Privacy Concerns", it talked about how Facebook shares your personal information with outside companies. For example, when you go to play the game "Farmville" it sometimes asks you who your friends are, your user id, your birth date, and where you live. That seems like a bit too many questions to ask about your personal life, just so you can play and access the game. Funny that I was writing the above sentence while I am in the computer lab of MCC, and I look over in the row in front of me, and see someone playing a Facebook game! Laura Sydell from NPR says that people rather play the game then think about the risk of their personal information getting out to unknown companies. Laurie Kramer, an expert on marketing strategies and privacy says that people are used to clicking out of privacy or security warnings because of all the warnings that come up when you use your computer. She also said that banks use this information to see who your friends are and to check their credit score, to see if you might fall down on your credit because of what your friends score is. Companies post pop up quizzes or gift cards to get you to enter your personal information so they can sell it and other companies can resell it like to a bank. Zynga, a website who sells the game Farmville, says it has a privacy policy that they don't sell your information to other companies. Facebook also said it does not let companies sell the information they collect from Facebook, but that statement was violated until now. I did not know when you play a game or enter information in one of those mysterious pop ups that it sends your informartion to companies and they sell it! I now know to be extremely careful not to provide my personal information to just any site, even if they have a privacy policy, you never know who could get their hands on it!