Put that hoe down! Step away from the wandering stallion. And leave. Just leave that sad brown duckling in the pond.
Abandon your farms; let your crops wither and die. Your Internet security depends on it.
A Wall Street Journal investigation found the most popular Facebook applications, particularly the ones that clog up your news feed with 27 notifications in a row detailing your aunt’s successful virtual apple picking endeavors, have a sinister secret behind their deceiving facade of Himalayan kitties running amok down on the farm.
The Facebook applications, including FarmVille and FrontierVille, have been found to leak personal information of their users to Internet tracking companies, even when privacy settings are set to their strictest.
Which means even if you’ve blacked out your keg stand default picture to prevent your virtual gardening mom from seeing such debauchery and deleted your latest farming bounty from your news feed to prevent your friends from knowing you’ve been sucked into the farm fun, Internet tracking companies and online advertising giants can still access your information.
This latest privacy woe for the social media superpower only further proves what we have long known. Not only is complete privacy on the Web impossible, but perhaps more disconcerting is that most people are indifferent to this fact.
We have reached a time when we value virtual entertainment and connectedness over privacy.
We’ve reached a time when we value a virtual bushel of berries more than our private lives. It’s time to choose, Gators. Do we value privacy or sad, lonely cyber ducklings more?
Choose wisely. Because we’ll probably delete you if we get one more invite to join your farming fun.
