The privacy problems just keep mounting for Facebook. This week, a report from Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy revealed that the “Login with Facebook” feature used widely across the web may have exposed your data to third-party trackers.

The Login with Facebook tool is used across the vast majority of popular websites, not to mention apps. It’s a simple and streamlined way to sign up for sites or access an existing account, but like with so much else involving Facebook, that convenience may come at a cost: your privacy. According to the report, this exploit could allow third parties to gather your name, email address, gender, profile picture, location and more.

For its part, Facebook said it’s investigating the alleged security flaw, and has temporarily suspended part of the tool.

“Scraping Facebook user data is in direct violation of our policies,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “While we are investigating this issue, we have taken immediate action by suspending the ability to link unique user IDs for specific applications to individual Facebook profile pages

This abuse of its tools isn’t necessarily Facebook’s fault, but there’s always more the social media giant could do to protect its users. And it’s a good thing there are so many watchdog organizations holding the company accountable.

Recommended Resources

BitDefender Traffic Light is a free cross-browser add-on that intercepts, processes and filters all Web traffic, blocking any malicious content and taking browser security to new levels.

Private Internet Access is an award-winning, cost-effective VPN solution. The use of an anonymous and trusted VPN is essential to your online privacy, security and identity protection.

System Mechanic 14 – Make your computer run like new. Winner of 200+ Editor’s Choice awards!