What caused last weeks scandal?
The Wall Street Journal investigation pitched the issue as a “Facebook privacy breach.” That isn’t really the best way to phrase it; there was no hole, hack, or exploit that led to last week’s report. The “breach” in question is the fact that, as a rule, some information about Facebook users is transmitted to third-party applications that sync up to Facebook. Among that is the user ID number, which can be matched up to a profile and all of the public information contained within–which includes first and last name by default, and often significantly more information based on how much that member has opted to render public.
