I bet you never really truly knew this, but did you know that every time you accept an application on Facebook you might be giving away your information to the company who created the application? You might even be giving away your friends information, your parents, your neighbors, your cousins, your daughters, your sons.
Bet that’s an eye opener.
It is extremely easy to create a data mining application, anybody with a small amount of computer programming knowledge and can do it, and with how programs spread on Facebook faster than gossip on Gossip Girl, you know a company could grab thousands of users in a single day.
One person get’s the original application invite, it could be a game, a quiz, a test, or even a petition. After that original invite
gets sent out, the person accepts it, it gets put on their profile for all to see. “Oh look! Betty just took a test to see how many friends they have in England! See how many you have..” We have all seen those type of posts on Facebook, and those type of posts are an amazing form of marketing that you don’t even think you are participating in.
In just a few hours, I made a test Facebook account named P. Adams, that account had full information filled out and everything was set to be extremely private. Afterwords I made an application on a different Facebook account, and then I sent out the application and gained access to a Mr. Patch Adams, who lived on 123 Fake St., was 63 years old, and so on. This information alone is enough to start some identity thieving if the company or person is feeling a little Dr. Evil inside of them.
Being secure on Facebook means to be smart, you don’t need amazing Anti-Virus software to protect you, and frankly, amazing Anti-Virus software wont protect you from a Facebook data-miner, only intelligence will. Think of MySpace and all of the different spam comments one would get, and it spread from one to two to three, that is what will happen in Facebook if this keeps up. Soon people will lose most of their information in a few moments and their accounts will be HiJacked and used maliciously. It has already happened before, friends of mine have lost control of their accounts entirely, all because they wanted to get that one last awesome plant for their Facebook wall.
Just be smart, and use Facebook for what it is meant to be used for, connecting with friends and family that you might not have talked to if it wasn’t for Facebook. Don’t lose control with apps, they aren’t always as nice as they may seem, even though they have awesome sparkle graphics.
In the mean time, why not become of fan of FixIt on Facebook? It’s just a page, not an app. 
