The revolutionary trend of social networking has made its ways in to just about every sphere of our lives and has enabled us to reconnect with family and friends, as well as create new contacts on the professional level. However, there is a darker side to the social networking phenomenon, where in the user privacy has always been under the scanner. In a recent revelation from Wall Street Journal, it was found that, several of the major social networking services such as the likes of Facebook, MySpace etc. have in fact been sharing user data with advertising companies in an effort to provide the latter with the tools to identify users by the names and other personal details.

This exchange of information is considered to be an infringement on user privacy, as these social networking behemoths have always tried to ensure the users that, their personal details given to the social networks are safe. As per the procedure, services like Facebook, sends user names or ID numbers in reference to user profiles, whenever any advertisement is clicked by these users. These details are provided to advertising companies, where in the details can be composed of users’ real name, age, hometown and occupation. Some of the biggest advertising platforms including Google Inc.’s DoubleClick and Yahoo Inc.’s Right Media have been identified as the recipient of such data, but both the companies have maintained innocence, stating that, they have no idea of the kind data sent over by social networks and so far, they haven’t used any identifiable data.

This current trend is said to be in contradiction of the social networks’ privacy polices, where they explicitly state that, these services do not share any personal user data, without a user’s consent. Along with Facebook, LiveJournal, Hi5, Xanga and Digg have also been singled out as some of the other social networking entities, that have been sharing the users’ personal data with advertising agencies.

Via Wall Street Journal