Category: facebook

People keep leaving me messages on Facebook. Apparantly they’re trying to get in touch with me using my ‘Advanced Wall’ or ‘Special Wall’ or something like that. As far as I can tell these are add-ons because when I try to read the messages I get a ‘Do you want to install this application’ message?

I really don’t want to install some application to read messages sent to me. Moreover – this implies that my friends are not aware that I can’t read these messages. Are they really sending me messages and happily thinking I might get them?

The daft thing is that computer people have been insisting for years the discipline, “don’t install any application that you don’t trust”. I don’t trust many of these application developers (I don’t know who they are), yet Facebook with its particular architecture not only encourages me to install ‘applications’ to see my messages, it gives them opt-out access to send me emails and (I am presuming here) does not notify my friends that a message being sent to me will not actually be received.

Seriously if somebody writes a rogue application, what is stopping them from siphoning off all sorts of personal information?

Would it be appropriate to message the friend in question and tell them I’m refusing to install this application and, if they really want to they can use my ordinary wall or (forbid the thought) email me…?