Facebook's newly installed app violates user privacy

Reports says that a recent release of an app from Facebook may violate user's rights. Facebook is accused by a consumer lobby group of breaching Germany's privacy laws with the launch of its App Center last week.

To be sure, Facebook has been threatened with possible legal action if it fails to respond to the Federation of German Consumer Organizations within the next seven days.

The lobby group says that Facebook was farming out customer information without informing its users that their data was being used, according to the Associated Press.

Facebook has until September 4th, 2012, to resolve this matter, the group said, or else it could face potential litigation.

Data protection officials in Germany have been strong-arming Facebook for quite some time now. Most recently, Hamburg's data protection commissioner Dr Johannes Caspar confirmed earlier this month that his office had reopened its probe of Facebook's facial recognition technology, complaining that the network was building a massive biometric database of its users without obtaining permission.

The investigation had been suspended to allow time for the Irish data protection authority to conclude its talks with Facebook, whose European office is headquartered in Ireland.

Nevertheless, that probe had included an audit of the company's data policy. Come early autumn, the Irish district prosecutor will rule on whether Facebook should face legal action under existing EU privacy laws.

On top of these privacy issues, Facebook has some serious security issues with its site. Cim Stordal, a fifteen years old teenager has discovered some critical security flaws in Facebook's programming code.