PrivacyChoice releases service to rate Facebook's apps on privacy protection

Sydney - Research firm PrivacyChoice has released a new service that rates how each of Facebook's top third-party apps respected consumer's privacy.

The free tool, Privacyscore for Facebook, details privacy policies and tracking practices of more than 200 top Facebook apps including games, work-related programs and sharing apps, Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Online tracking is fueling national debate over whether new do-not-track laws are needed to safeguard consumers' online privacy.

Leaders in the online advertising industry use a version of Privacyscore to self-control the tracking practices of online advertising networks.

'This certainly is going to be a useful tool for consumers, but it may actually be even more useful in pushing application developers, who don't like getting poor grades, to look more closely at their own privacy practices," says Jules Polonetsky, director of the Future of Privacy Forum, a Washington, D.C., think tank on data security.

Facebook's wide web presence comes with "a responsibility to hold people who are developing apps on their platform accountable for the (privacy) assertions that they're making," Craig Spiezle, executive director of the Online Trust Alliance said.

According to PrivacyChoice, 140 different tracking entities routinely collect information about users of the top Facebook apps.

Trackers could correlate that data to profiles of individuals' browsing behaviour across multiple web pages in order to deliver more relevant ads.

Privacyscore's top score is 100. Deductions are made for sharing data with an excessive number of tracking entities, failing to honor deletion requests, failing to provide an opt-out choice or storing consumer data for long periods.

Gamemaker Zynga's general counsel Reggie Davis said that his company welcomed tools such as Privacyscore.