Facebook Timeline Remover: Works, but Malicious

Re: Facebook Timeline Remover: Works, but Malicious by Karunamon on Thursday September 06, 2012 @03:17PM (#4485707)

>Why take issue with an unsuspicious app that works as advertised?

  #include <closed_sw_boilerplate_warning.h>

Because you can't prove that the app isn't doing something suspicious. You know what it purports and appears to do, and you know that it needs access to your activity on facebook.com. Even then, it has an auto update mechanism, so even if it isn't doing something untoward now, it easily could in the future without you being the wiser.

Knowing how much of the average user's life is detailed on Facebook, it's one thing that deserves extra scrutiny when it comes to allowing randoms to have access to it.

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Re: Facebook Timeline Remover: Works, but Malicious by malenm on Thursday September 06, 2012 @03:38PM (#4485805)

This was exactly my point - the fact you can't prove that the app isn't doing something suspicious is true of every app. Yes, there are a lot of personal details on Facebook. There are on your phone, too. These are not Timeline-removal app-specific.

Yesterday, there was a post on Hacker News about the Wolfram Alpha Facebook Analytics [1] with very little concern about privacy (3 comments out of 104 mention privacy). My issue with this post is that it needlessly targets Timeline removal apps when it just seems to be making a general statement about being careful when installing any app.

[1]http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/08/wolframalpha-personal...

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Re: Facebook Timeline Remover: Works, but Malicious by Karunamon on Thursday September 06, 2012 @04:12PM (#4485983)

Understood, but they took the time to compare all of the ones available in the chrome store, and roughly half of them (!) were requesting permissions they absolutely didn't need to function. That is worthy of mentioning, IMHO.

Lazy developer or spyware?

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