Penn State assistant professor of information sciences and technology Heng Xu pointed out that although each app must provide a link to its terms and conditions, the consequences for your privacy settings are obscure.
He said: ‘The only way to find out how the information is going to be used is to go to each app's website and review the terms of use. And many people won't do that.’
The sign-up screen currently is a general agreement that shows information third-party developers are requesting. If the member does not agree, the member cannot use the app.
The screen designed by the researchers allows members to decide what types of information they are comfortable sharing and with whom they want to share it.
The researchers, who presented their findings yesterday at the Association for Computer Machinery Symposium on Computer Human Interaction for Management of Information Technology, Boston, asked a group of Facebook members to try two app sign-up page designs.
One was a single-colour scheme and one used three colours - green, yellow and red - to designate critical information.
The design also features three boxes to offer members the option to share their app activity history with all the members of their network, just specific people, or keep all of the information private.
Privacy settings allow members to determine how much information the member wants to display or share with their members of their network and Facebook.
This data can include birthdate, hometown and current city, as well as pictures the members uploaded to their pages.
Members may not consider data like hometown or birthdates vital information, but Xu said that hackers can use such information to guess social security numbers.
Xu said that people may not even know that they may expose their friends' personal data if they use apps. A calendar app, for example, could allow developers to access the member's birthdate, as well as the birthdate of friends who are part of the member's network.
‘Some people may know that they are allowing these companies to access their data,’ Xu said. ‘However, they might not know that their info will be leaked through their friends, use of games and other applications on Facebook.’
Professor Xu’s research comes after it was revealed that Facebook has been watching the web pages its members visit – even when they have logged out.
The social networking site was forced to confirm that it has been constantly tracking its 750million users, even when they are using other sites.
It said the huge privacy breach was simply a mistake - that software automatically downloaded to users' computers when they logged in to Facebook 'inadvertently' sent information to the company, whether or not they were logged in at the time.
Most would assume that Facebook stops monitoring them after they leave its site, but technology bloggers discovered this was not the case.
In fact, data has been regularly sent back to the social network’s servers – data that could be worth billions when creating 'targeted' advertising based on the sites users visit.
The website’s practices were exposed by Australian technology blogger Nik Cubrilovic and provoked a furious response across the internet.
Facebook claims to have 'fixed' the issue - and 'thanked' Mr Cubrilovic for pointing it out - while simultaneously claiming that it wasn't really an issue in the first place.
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