Facebook. Your friends are using it. Your workmates are using it. Chances are you’re using it. Facebook is already well known one of the world’s most popular social networking platforms, but it’s also rapidly becoming one of the world’s most popular application platforms too.

The popularity of Facebook applications is unsurprising. They’re easy to write, as well as being easy to share and install. However most users remain unaware of what information can be accessed by their applications, and more surprisingly, by their friend’s applications.

Join researcher Paul Fenwick as he examines just how much information he can extract from friends using only the Facebook API.

via Facebook Privacy: Stalking 2.0.

After watching the (somewhat long [30 minutes], I’ll admit), I’m now extremely miffed that I didn’t turn up to this particular Tech Talk held by TUCS.

As a result of this video, I’ve now removed all extraneous apps from my Facebook profile (like, the ones that I’m not using, or haven’t used in a while), and have now locked-down my Facebook account (at least, to the API).

Scary stuff indeed.

This post part of Blogtober 2009. A post a day keeps the stalkers away! 😀