You know when you sign up to something with Facebook........?

It's a statistical fact that most of us now use Facebook to one extent or another. It's become so pervasive that you'll even be encouraged to sign up to other services using Facebook

You may have realised at some level there's a reason for companies encouraging this 'Facebook sign-up' which if you thought about you wouldn't like. But, hell time is short.....too short to be spending worrying about that so you sign up anyway. Should doing this give us any real cause for concern?

This morning, reading some stuff online, my linky-finger led me to the Facebook Developer page about the Social Graph:

At Facebook's core is the social graph; people and the connections they have to everything they care about. The Graph API presents a simple, consistent view of the Facebook social graph, uniformly representing objects in the graph (e.g., people, photos, events, and pages) and the connections between them (e.g., friend relationships, shared content, and photo tags).

So, you and all about you are objects, right. Get it?

The reason that other websites want you to log in via Facebook is to mine data about you. Mostly it's harmless stuff - companies want to know as much about you as possible to personalise the "advertising experience" for you online. Is that because they're helpful folk, pointing you in the right direction? Maybe. But, if you think 'maybe not', the next time you see one of the Facebook 'Request for Permission' boxes, think again:

By clicking "Allow", you're giving someone an "Access Token" to your data. Often, it's what Facebook refer to as a 'basic access token'. This allows access to your:

user id, name, profile picture, gender, age range, locale, networks, user ID, list of friends, and any other information they have made public.

To get access to any additional information about you or your friends, companies need to ask you for specific permission. This page lists all the data objects that can be requested. As you can see, it's quite comprehensive. (Though as FB say, the more that's asked, the less likely people are to click through).

Once you've given permission and granted an 'access token', you end up as a series of data objects - here's a clip of the data objects from my basic info:

Nothing to run screaming down the road about, but worth being aware of just how FB is using your social activity for commercial gain. Some people won't care, many won't know. Others will welcome the personalised online shopping experience it brings, but if you're like me, once you know, you'd rather not all the same, thanks

If you want to see what else FB have to say about this, browse around their developer pages.

Oh, and by the by, yes this site does offer Facebook sign-up. For the record, I don't use it personally and have no access to your data objects.