RSSFacebook feeds faceplant in third-party status tsunami
By Angela Gunn | Published July 30, 2009, 1:14 AM
An apparent glitch in Facebook's settings has taken to pulling in updates from users' other services -- FriendFeed, Twitter, Mafia Wars and perhaps others -- whether or not it has been authorized to do so. Only uninstalling the relevant Facebook applications seems to quell the flood.
Aghast users were reporting late Wednesday that feeds from multiple services were appearing on their Facebook walls no matter what the current privacy settings might be. It's a potential privacy nightmare for users such as Kyle Sellers, who commented on a message board that "I specifically keep my accounts separate so I don't overwhelm my family with my political rantings. I have never been so furious with a web service before. I understand a service failing, but this seems both sinister and dishonest."
Facebook has offered no comment as of early Thursday morning; meanwhile, "Twitter Overwhelms" is currently the #1 trending topic on that service.
My goodness me i seriously cant believe this actually happened to me also! Well since nobody knows me here and i will just use an alias to tell you my story. I work for a London Escorts agency doing the web side of things. We also have a company twitter that we update from time to time. Can you imagine what happened to me? i was logged onto my facebook and suddenly they both were linked and i was able to see the London Escorts agency plastered all over my facebook account!
Some applications are damn scary on facebook, thank god i had removed the London Escorts updates from my facebook before any of my friends or family saw! This is the escort agency: http://vlondonescorts.co.uk/
What about the rest of you guys? Happened to you yet?
Score: 2
|Come on! Big deal of a hypocrite woman who do not want their family to know about her political point of view!
Facebook may have a (small) problem with preferences, but making an article about a hysteric ranting woman is too much!
Score: -1
|What the... crap, is it Low Reading Comprehension Day again already? Try it again, Floodland; if you need to move your lips we'll certainly understand.
Score: 1
|and i have zero apps approved or added to either service... and privacy settings mostly on max at the facebook, all is well
Score: 2
|I have a few -- and Twitter's among them, though at the moment for testing reasons I was already operating with every tweet posting by default. I figure if my family hasn't figured out my politics by now, they're so good at not paying attention that a little thing like my tweetstream won't bother 'em :-) . I am OTOH curious about the cause and whether it's anything to do with the upcoming changes -- especially since when the granular-permissions stuff is launched I may well prefer to not have every tweet visible to everyone. So many questions...
Score: 1
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