Increasingly, I’ve seen opportunities on websites to ‘sign in’ via Facebook or Twitter. Sounds like a great idea right? I mean, who wants yet ANOTHER place to sign in. ANOTHER password to remember- and hey, I plan to share this article anyway, and I’m doing this on my own time, so what does it matter?
Yikes! It really matters.
Let’s set aside the fact that Facebook owns an incredible amount of personal information about you. Information that you volunteer to your friends as part of conversation- as part of being a friend. So, assuming you have your profile locked down so that your information is not public, it’s all good? Well, sort of.
Facebook owns and collects that info. It shares a limited amount with advertisers (much less than advertisers would like) but when you allow 3rd party access to your account- from an app to a ‘social sharing’ plug in or sign in, you’re allowing that site access to your account. Some apps state that they can ‘post on your behalf’ for example, and social readers (like The Washington Post)require you to allow access to your Facebook account in order to read the article your friend is ‘sharing.’ This move is basically an ‘end run’ to get access to your account. You are basically giving the app/website permission to look at your profile settings, your online habits, and follow what you read, look at and most certainly your comments.
What is happening increasingly is websites are asking you to ‘sign in’ via Facebook/Twitter and Google to enable easier ‘sharing’ across social platforms. Today, I was reading an article on Jezebel and got this notice:
The fact that the site is suggesting that I open up a separate account to ensure my privacy is pretty telling. I mean, I already have an account with this website- so…. why do I need a ‘generic’ Facebook or Google account so I can protect my privacy?
I will share more examples of this in the coming weeks. But I want to be clear that we should all be careful about allowing access to our social network accounts. There are many reasons to take this seemingly innocuous act seriously- first point is of course, control over what your share and with whom. But there are other things to consider- can your comments be viewed by people you don’t know? Can your name and image be used on these sites without your permission? Do you want the world to know EVERYTHING you read online? Many things to consider- but for your own protection, when you see these ‘requests’ think of them as a warning- to slow down and proceed with caution.
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