Thaindian News

November 2, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): Certain developers of the Facebook have been found to be guilty of selling the unique Ids. Facebook authorities have now decided to take action against this criminal violation of rules wherein the Ids had been passed on to a data broker.

Mike Vernal, the Facebook platform engineer said that the developers less than twelve in number, will be barred from accessing the Facebook communications channels for a total period of six months. Their data practices are also likely to be scrutinized by a third party auditor who will ascertain whether they have complied with the standard practices set by Facebook.

A private agreement between Rapleaf, a data broker and Facebook had been reached as well. Rapleaf had added the Facebook Ids that he had obtained to his own database. He will now be required to delete all the Ids that he has obtained so far apart from promising not to use similar tactics in future.

Facebook had taken action against those guilty when the user Ids of those playing games on Facebook had been noticed getting transmitted to Internet tracking as well as advertising companies. The disclosure by Wall Street Journal revealed that it contradicted the terms of service that was promised by Facebook to its users.

A Federal lawsuit has now been filed against Zynga, the developer of some of its most popular apps. Facebook has accused Zynga of sharing almost 218 million Ids illegally. Zynga refutes the charges saying that it is without any merit and has retaliated by filing a similar case against Facebook.