Facebook is taking action against developers who flouted company rules by selling unique user IDs to a data broker. The unnamed developers, which numbered fewer than 12, won't have access to Facebook communication channels for six months, Facebook platform engineer Mike Vernal said on Friday. They also will be required to …

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Tuesday 2nd November 2010 10:20 GMT Anonymous Coward

Simple Solution

The facebook IDs of users should be generated uniquely for each connect application.

This will mean they are useful to only single developer. Even if they are sold or leaked, they can't be used by another developer to identify users.

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Tuesday 2nd November 2010 10:20 GMT JaitcH

Same old, same old

Facebook and it's 'friends' can't be trusted. Period.

So what part don't users understand?

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Tuesday 2nd November 2010 10:24 GMT Anonymous Coward

Temporary Exile?

Why only temporary exile? Ban them for good if what they've done is so wrong. Or is it that they committed the sin of reminding people what Facebook is really all about?

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1. Tuesday 2nd November 2010 12:54 GMT Pascal Monett
  
  Ban them ?
  
  Nah, their only sin is that they got caught. Zuckerberg isn't going to ban them for that. He's going to give them time to refine the procedure so, the next time they try, they will hopefully go under the radar.
  
  Then he will set up a mechanism to cash in on the ID selling.
  
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2. Tuesday 2nd November 2010 15:12 GMT Alastair 7
  
  You think that would make a difference?
  
  Ban Company. Owners of company set up a new company, start selling personal data. Ban Company. Repeat forever.
  
  Clearly there's money to be made with this sort of activity, so I'm sure it's worth the money to establish a new company each time.
  
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Tuesday 2nd November 2010 10:24 GMT Owen Sweeney

Wow!

SIX months - now, THAT'S a deterrent!

What a fucking joke!

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Tuesday 2nd November 2010 10:24 GMT Mike Green

Don't sell our product's-- err customers' details...

...that's our job!

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Tuesday 2nd November 2010 10:36 GMT nichomach

Good report...

....shitty behaviour from Facebook and their pet developer. Vernal's "“We look forward to broader cooperation from everyone in the web community to confront issues that impact all of us.”" is a fairly pathetic piece of deflection - "It's not OUR problem that our privacy policies are farcical and our tame developers have the ethical awareness of a rabid stoat, because everyone else is the same. Really, they are."

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Tuesday 2nd November 2010 12:54 GMT url

(untitled)

personally, i want to know if google benefitted from it's partnership/investment with zynga in the data leak mentioned.

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Tuesday 2nd November 2010 14:08 GMT zaralockwood

hmmm...

so I take it facebook are going to ban zynga for 6 months then, and remove all their apps ? or are they only selecting some developers to ban -i.e the ones that buy less adverts ?

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1. Tuesday 2nd November 2010 14:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Zynga won't be banned
  
  think about it... over 40% of user activity on Facebook is apparently playing games so can you imagine FB ever doing more than expressing outrage at their #1 revenue stream?
  
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Tuesday 2nd November 2010 14:54 GMT screaminfakah

What is the big deal anyway?

So facebook and devs did what most of the internet does and is still doing. What do you think Goolge, Yahoo, MSN, etc. do with their cookies?

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Tuesday 2nd November 2010 14:57 GMT BillG

What a Joke

What a joke - violate a privacy agreement and you get a weak slap on the wrist. Lawsuit? No. A fine? No. Criminal charges? No.

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Tuesday 2nd November 2010 20:52 GMT Anonymous Coward

What's the point?

What's the point of "social networking" if you want privacy? Zuckerberg said it all when he declared that his policy was to assume that all users wanted to interconnect. Why else would you be social networking? Not for privacy, that's for sure.

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