• PC World, Wednesday, May 11, 2011 11:51 AM

According to the security experts at Symantec, Facebook was accidentally exposing certain user information to third parties, including advertisers, for the past four years. "Another day, another Facebook privacy fiasco," writes PCWorld. "Symantec claims Facebook has not only leaked private data, such as your sex and your age, but for the past four years, third-parties have had access to such goldmines as your profile, photos, and chats."

According to Symantec, certain Facebook apps have been inadvertently leaking "access tokens" to third parties, such as advertisers and analytic platforms. Symantec estimates that close to 100,000 Facebook apps were enabling this leakage in February 2011. That said, Symantec believes it's likely that the third parties weren't even aware of the consumers data mines at their disposal.

Alerted to the problem, Facebook has already taken action to block to leak. "But," according to PCWorld," some Facebook users might still be vulnerable to ... digital invasions of privacy."

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