Facebook, MySpace & Other Social Networking Sites Share Personal Info With Advertisers

The Wall Street Journal reports, Facebook, MySpace and several other social-networking sites have been sending user information to advertisers that could be used to find consumers' names and other personal details, despite statements in their privacy policy that they don't share user information without consent.

What happens is that these sites send user names or ID numbers tied to the user's personal profiles when the user's click on ads. This infomation assists the advertisers in looking up the user's personal details which include a person's real name, age, hometown and occupation. Each site shares various data and what is shared depends on which site is used. This information sharing is typical across the web but the social networking sites provide privacy policies agains such behavior.

The Wall Street Journal states:

"Several large advertising companies identified by the Journal as receiving the data, including Google Inc.'s DoubleClick and Yahoo Inc.'s Right Media, said they were unaware of the data being sent to them from the social-networking sites, and said they haven't made use of it."

It is also reported that LiveJournal, Hi5, Xanga and Digg also sent advertising companies user names or ID numbers in the same manner. Even Twitter was found to pass web addresses and user names of profiles visited on Twitter.com when users clicked links in profiles.

Facebook took this procedure to a higher level. Sometimes they sent information on which user name or ID was clicking on the ad PLUS the user name or ID of the page being viewed. This information lets an advertiser know a bit about a user's interests.

A letter has been sent to the FTC by Ben Edelman, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who studies Internet advertising. He is requesting an investigation of Facebook's practices.