A new Facebook app called “Most Used Words” has gone viral with almost 18 million users enabling the application as of this writing. The app is not a proprietary Facebook feature but originates from a third-party South Korean company called Vonvon. It requires users to log in using their Facebook credentials and like most standard apps, informs them that it will “receive the following info: your public profile, friend list and Timeline posts.” Comparitech, a technology analysis and review website, breaks down the information the application collects about its users: 

• Name, profile picture, age, sex, birthday, and other public info
• Entire friend list
• Everything you’ve ever posted on your timeline
• All of your photos and photos you’re tagged in
• Education history
• Hometown and current city
• Everything you’ve ever liked
• IP address
• Info about the device you’re using including browser and language

It’s not surprising that an app which collects, analyzes and aggregates your Facebook posts into a colorful word cloud collects a significant amount of data from your timeline. Though the additional data listed above paints a more complete picture of the potential privacy and security risks users face when a significant amount of information is provided to a single entity. Furthermore, simply providing your Facebook username and password to a third-party application for a word cloud app is frivolous at best and potentially reckless, as many users reuse the same passwords across websites and applications. There are numerous websites that will generate word clouds based on user input or a URL that do not require login credentials. 

In a statement to VentureBeat, Vonvon’s chief executive and founder Jonghwa Kim said that ““There are some false rumors that we are trying to capture people’s information so we can sell it to third parties. We don’t really get any meaningful information when people use our apps. And when they share it on their walls, it really doesn’t have much information about them.” As reported in the aforementioned Comparitech article, if users attempt to restrict the application’s access to any of their information it doesn’t allow them to proceed. Kim is also addressing additional concerns regarding the company's privacy policy, which states that the information the app collects could be stored anywhere in the world and that Vonvon is free to sell your data to anyone.