Facebook rolls out new app permissions system

SAN FRANCISCO: Social networking major Facebook on Wednesday began making outside applications or websites to provide details as to what private information they want from the online profiles of the users.

The new interface, which is aimed to bring more “transparency”, would pop up when users connect their Facebook accounts to third-party services. Websites or applications then must get permission from users for specific data, said Bret Taylor, chief technology officer of Facebook, in a blog post.

This is something that the company initially announced last year following criticism on behalf of privacy officials in Canada and expanded upon at its F8 developer conference this spring in San Francisco, according to a CNET report.

“In order for these applications and websites to provide social and customized experiences, they need to know a little bit about you,” said Taylor.

“We understand, however, that it's important you also have control over what you're sharing. With this new authorization process, when you log into an application with your Facebook account, the application will only be able to access the public parts of your profile by default. To access the private parts of your profile, the application has to explicitly ask for your permission,” the blog post added.

In recent times Facebook had faced a lot of criticism over privacy issues. The social networking site is visited monthly by 540 million people, which is more than 35 per cent of the Internet population, according to Google data.