Many Facebook users are familiar with the wildly popular Zynga games. The casual audience they draw is the envy of game publishers the world over, however Zynga and a number of other developers have had their names launched into disrepute in light of a report surfacing that found these games transmitted user data in viloation of the Facebook privacy settings.
The Wall Street Journal report found that many applications similar to FarmVille were transmitting information that could be used to identify individual users to “dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies”, as well as giving these firms access to full lists of users friends. This information was even able to be extracted from Facebook accounts that had their privacy levels set to the highest settings.
A Zynga spokesperson is quoted as saying that Zynga “has a strict policy of not passing personally identifiable information to any third parties.” They will be working with the Facebook team to help improve Facebook security.
