January 31, 2008

Many use the social networking site Facebook without ever thinking about security but you could be leaving yourself vulnerable anytime you share music or play a game. Facebook applications are not necessarily from Facebook.

"As the privacy issue comes into play here, because when a user installs these applications, that third party untrusted application gets all the users privileges" said Adrienne Felt, a UVa computer science student.

That's something Felt is hoping to make people more aware of.

"You just see this default click through screen that's on every single application. People don't pay attention to it and from what I found most people don't understand that it means that they're giving this untrusted application access to all their information" said Felt.

Felt says people need to understand what they are doing while on the web.

"I just think that people should make sure that they read and really understand these privacy policies and understand that they're giving away their and their friends information and maybe think twice before doing it and also maybe if they're not comfortable with it ask questions and maybe it will change" said Felt.