None of you should be particularly shocked to know that a commitment to privacy is not one of Facebook's priorities. An article in the Wall Street Journal via Engadget reveals that Facebook shares your personal information with advertisers regardless of your privacy settings. Even setting every setting to "Friends Only" prevents nothing:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/18/wsj-facebook-apps-and-games-are-dishing-out-your-user-id-to-una/
That's still not terrible surprising to me, but what is is that under Application Settings, by default your Hometown, Likes and Interests, Education and Place of Work, and even Places I Check Into are available to any Application that [i]any of your friends[/u] use! If one of my friends uses, for example, Joe Shmo's Shady App, suddenly Joe Shmo knows where I live, where I went to school, where I work, and what I care about. Luckily, there's a fix: Settings -> Privacy -> Applications, Games, and Websites -> Info Accessible Through Friends. I strongly recommend strict-ifying that to nothing checked!
Edit: One last fun nugget at the bottom of that page: "Your name, profile picture, gender, networks and user ID (along with any other information you've set to everyone) is available to friends' applications unless you turn off platform applications and websites."
http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/18/wsj-facebook-apps-and-games-are-dishing-out-your-user-id-to-una/
That's still not terrible surprising to me, but what is is that under Application Settings, by default your Hometown, Likes and Interests, Education and Place of Work, and even Places I Check Into are available to any Application that [i]any of your friends[/u] use! If one of my friends uses, for example, Joe Shmo's Shady App, suddenly Joe Shmo knows where I live, where I went to school, where I work, and what I care about. Luckily, there's a fix: Settings -> Privacy -> Applications, Games, and Websites -> Info Accessible Through Friends. I strongly recommend strict-ifying that to nothing checked!
Edit: One last fun nugget at the bottom of that page: "Your name, profile picture, gender, networks and user ID (along with any other information you've set to everyone) is available to friends' applications unless you turn off platform applications and websites."