How safe is Facebook?

BBC technology programme Click has found a way which allows developers of applications for the Facebook platform not only to steal data from people using the application but also from the friends of these people. In essence the application can get data such as name, birth day, employer etc. from the system and in the hands of the wrong people.

In one of the comments to the article, the very sane argument is made that you can only steal as much as the next person uploads. In other words if you keep your data to yourself, it won’t get stolen.

For many this is in practice impossible as it puts serious limitations on what you can use the web for. To me this is just another argument for letting old fashioned banks handle data security.

(Hat tip to Mondofunza for the link)