While concerns of privacy and content ownership are old news for Facebook users, a recent mix up with Facebook advertisers has gotten more than a few Facebook fans on their heels.
A scenario: Imagine being a loving husband who is going about his day, sipping his coffee, checking his Facebook updates and then… pow!!!… up pops a photo of his wife on a dating site ad. Unhappy much? Yes, we think so.
Long story short, (some) Facebook advertisers stepped out of line with Facebook advertising policy and used photos of users (without their permission) in their ads – happily married or not, this poor couple had no say in how their images were used on the network. YIKES!!!
The good news is that Facebook has just announced a new ad policy which will keep your private user data out of the hands of scheming 3rd party networks. Nice to see Facebook taking a stronger stance, we certainly hope they maintain this aggressive approach – privacy is beyond important and maintaining their users’ trust should be the utmost thought in any software developer and Community builder’s mind.
- http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/07/facebook-ads.html
- http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/07/facebook-advertising-policy/
In a post on his Public Relations and Web Marketing blog, our fearless CEO, Ed Schipul, made a further interesting recommendation for Facebook users – UFAID! :
We propose September 1st 2009 as Uninstall Facebook Applications Internationally Day (UFAID).
Not all applications mind you, just the ones you don’t trust or recognize.
To uninstall your Facebook Applications follow these steps:
- Login to Facebook
- Click on your ‘Profile†link at the top of the page.
- Scroll down to the ‘Applications†link on the lower left. Click it.
- Click ‘Edit Apps†link which should take you to a page like this: https://www.facebook.com/editapps.php
- IMPORTANT Change ‘Show†from ‘Recently Used†to ‘Authorizedâ€!
- Click the ‘X†next to the applications you want to remove.
- Confirm.
- Repeat until all cruft and untrustworthy applications are removed.
Find any applications you did not realize were installed? Yup, thought you would. Put them in the comments below so we can see the sneaky ones?
I just went through my Facebook apps and was surprised… apparently I HAVE been pretty diligent in not accepting applications and had only a few that didn't need to be authorized any longer.
However, I'm not of the sheep throwing and vampire battling variety – so I'm interested in seeing what others come up with!!
I just finished deleting all my apps. There were way more than I realized although I do remember most of them. A strange thing happened when I deleted the last one – I suddenly noticed that FB had given me 10 credits. I can't be certain they weren't already there but I had never noticed them before.