homehome Home chatchat Notifications


Have you tried Facebook's 'Most Used Words' app? If yes, say goodbye to your privacy

The ‘Most Used Words’ app has picked up steam more and more on our Facebook feeds, but as it’s often the case, this rings some major privacy alerts. So far, more than 17 million people have used the app to find out what they say most – but the recent uproar has begun when people […]

Mihai Andrei
November 26, 2015 @ 11:00 am

share Share

The ‘Most Used Words’ app has picked up steam more and more on our Facebook feeds, but as it’s often the case, this rings some major privacy alerts.

So far, more than 17 million people have used the app to find out what they say most – but the recent uproar has begun when people realize that not only is the app looking at all your posts from 2015, but it’s looking at a trove of other personal information as well. Comparitech, a tech comparison and review website, dug into the specifics of the app and showed that users give up “almost every private detail”: name, profile picture, every that has has been posted to your timeline, your entire friend list, IP address, education history, information about the device you used to connect to Facebook, and anything else you may have added to your profile. Even after you don’t use the app, Vonvon is able to “use any non-personally-identifying information” you provide it with.

Furthermore, this gathered information can be used on Vonvon’s (the company that developed the app) servers at “any location”, and if the information is stored in a different country, it may not have the same privacy protection as it does in your country. The European Court of Justice’s recent ruling that Safe Harbour, which saw a data sharing agreement between the UK and US, is invalid was made specifically on that basis. As if that wasn’t bad enough, your data could also be sold by Vonvon. They do state that they won’t pass your information to third party companies — unless it has informed you, the user, of its plans to do so.

It’s not the first time Facebook has been criticized for its lack of privacy, or for allowing its apps to breach privacy. Even WhatsApp, for instance, has been unable to explain why they accessed a reporter’s contacts more than 23,000 times over seven days.

So, do you still want to know what your most used words are?

share Share

Does My Red Look Like Your Red? The Age-Old Question Just Got A Scientific Answer and It Changes How We Think About Color

Scientists found that our brains process colors in surprisingly similar ways.

Why Blue Eyes Aren’t Really Blue: The Surprising Reason Blue Eyes Are Actually an Optical Illusion

What if the piercing blue of someone’s eyes isn’t color at all, but a trick of light?

Meet the Bumpy Snailfish: An Adorable, Newly Discovered Deep Sea Species That Looks Like It Is Smiling

Bumpy, dark, and sleek—three newly described snailfish species reveal a world still unknown.

Scientists Just Found Arctic Algae That Can Move in Ice at –15°C

The algae at the bottom of the world are alive, mobile, and rewriting biology’s rulebook.

A 2,300-Year-Old Helmet from the Punic Wars Pulled From the Sea Tells the Story of the Battle That Made Rome an Empire

An underwater discovery sheds light on the bloody end of the First Punic War.

Scientists Hacked the Glue Gun Design to Print Bone Scaffolds Directly into Broken Legs (And It Works)

Researchers designed a printer to extrude special bone grafts directly into fractures during surgery.

How Much Does a Single Cell Weigh? The Brilliant Physics Trick of Weighing Something Less Than a Trillionth of a Gram

Scientists have found ingenious ways to weigh the tiniest building blocks of life

A Long Skinny Rectangular Telescope Could Succeed Where the James Webb Fails and Uncover Habitable Worlds Nearby

A long, narrow mirror could help astronomers detect life on nearby exoplanets

Scientists Found That Bending Ice Makes Electricity and It May Explain Lightning

Ice isn't as passive as it looks.

The Crystal Behind Next Gen Solar Panels May Transform Cancer and Heart Disease Scans

Tiny pixels can save millions of lives and make nuclear medicine scans affordable for both hospitals and patients.