{"id":187,"date":"2009-11-11T17:26:29","date_gmt":"2009-11-12T00:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.funk.co.nz\/blog\/?p=187"},"modified":"2009-11-11T17:26:29","modified_gmt":"2009-11-12T00:26:29","slug":"be-careful-of-malicious-facebook-applications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.funk.co.nz\/blog\/technology\/be-careful-of-malicious-facebook-applications","title":{"rendered":"Be careful of malicious Facebook applications"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I get invited to install apps on my Facebook and it always makes me wonder when I see the amount of data that they are about to get hold of. I normally quit out at that stage and decline the offer. So today I decided to have a look around, do some research, and find out the dilly-o on Facebook app security.<\/p>\n

It turns out that is now possible to check if an app has been approved by Facebook (see the last two links).<\/p>\n

So here are somefairly eye-opening articles about how dodgy Facebook Apps can be:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.readwriteweb.com\/archives\/how_safe_are_facebook_applications.php<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Koobface<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/us.trendmicro.com\/imperia\/md\/content\/us\/trendwatch\/researchandanalysis\/the_real_face_of_koobface_jul2009.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.networkworld.com\/news\/2008\/010308-facebook-secret-crush.html<\/a><\/p>\n

To the credit of Facebook however, they do now have a \"Verified Application\" program, which you can read about here:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/developers.facebook.com\/news.php?blog=1&story=247<\/a><\/p>\n

So this is good, and you can find if an app you want to install is verified or not by searching on its name. I did a search for Farmville, an app that I have used in the past, and noticed it does not contain a tick of approval. Luckily for me, I run this on a Mac so nothing bad has happened so far, but it does make me pretty weary of Facebook apps still. FB have done a good job but they need to do a little more I reckon.<\/p>\n

The new App Directory is located at:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/apps\/directory.php<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I get invited to install apps on my Facebook and it always makes me wonder when I see the amount of data that they are about to get hold of. I normally quit out at that stage and decline the offer. So today I decided to have a look around, do some research, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funk.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funk.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funk.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funk.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funk.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.funk.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funk.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funk.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funk.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}