Facebook and privacy issues

[Commentary] If you thought Facebook was your personal playground, think again.

Play the most popular games, and your personal information - and in some cases, your list of friends - is sent to app-makers and their allies in the advertising and data-gathering trades. The problem may bother the tens of millions of regular players of FarmVille and Mafia Wars, to name two popular games that figure in the problem. It should trouble the rest of the social-networking site's 500 million users, who will wonder where they stand. There's also a broader, Internet-wide issue: just how private is life in a digital age, when personal information is siphoned off by firms watching every key stroke? It may be that Facebook is too swamped with managing its growth to keep on eye on privacy promises. It could be a onetime lapse exploited by a handful of sleazy data-collecting companies. It may be a problem that Facebook can easily fix. Whatever the cause, it needs an answer. Facebook and other networking sites need to follow through on providing privacy in the online world the firms have created.