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| Sometimes when a big consumer technology company is caught failing to protect the privacy of its users’ personal information it is tempting to compare it to a child caught with one hand in the cookie jar. All those personal data are so valuable, how could anyone resist an illicit dip every now and then? | 有时候，当听到某大型消费类技术公司被曝光未能保护用户个人资料的隐私时，人们总会忍不住联想到这样一幅画面：一个孩子在把手伸进饼干罐时，被抓了个现行。那些个人信息是那样地值钱，怎么会有人能抵御住不时出现的诱惑、不去非法获取它们呢？ |
| The danger, if junior doesn’t learn to keep his or her hands out, is that someone in a position of authority will try to put a tighter lid on the jar. | 如果那个孩子不懂得住手，那么他/她面临的风险是，总会有某个有资格管他/她的人，给这个罐子盖上一个更紧的盖子。 |
| In other cases, though, there is a better analogy: the overpowered muscle car given as an 18th birthday present. It’s an awesome machine – but was it a good idea to put it in the hands of someone who has barely learnt to drive? | 但有时，还可以用一个更形象的类比：送一辆马力超强的“肌肉车”作为18岁生日礼物。这辆车确实酷毙了，但如果是把它交到一个几乎不会开车的人手中，这还会是个好主意吗？ |
| That’s the image that springs to mind from the latest privacy embarrassment to hit Facebook. The world’s favourite social network (users: 550m) admitted this week that it inadvertently passed some information to the “apps” – things like games you play with friends, or family trees – that can be accessed through the site. Some apps, in turn, handed the information over to advertisers who, under Facebook’s rules, had no right to see it. | 这正是我在听到Facebook最近遭遇的“隐私门”时，跃入我脑海中的场景。这个全球最受欢迎的社交网站（拥有5.5亿用户）上周承认，自己不慎将一些资料传递给了一些可以通过该网站访问的“应用程序”——譬如某些可以与朋友们同时玩的游戏，或是家谱图(family trees)。一些应用程序转手将资料卖给广告商，而根据Facebook的规定，这些广告商本无权浏览这些资料。 |
| A system that is supposed to be sealed, keeping data in the hands of Facebook and the apps personally selected by its users, turned out to have a leak. | 这一事件证明，Facebook的个人资料保密系统存在着漏洞——该系统本应是密不透风的，个人资料本应仅由Facebook和用户亲自挑选的应用程序保管。 |
| Facebook’s explanation of this glitch was somewhat disingenuous. It blamed a basic flaw in the design of web browsers for the problem. But if that was the case, then why, by its own estimate, did only a handful of app developers fall foul of its rules? | Facebook对此次事故的解释多少有些不真诚。它将问题归咎于网页浏览器的设计存在基本缺陷。但若真的如此，那为何据它自己的估计，总共只有屈指可数的几个应用开发商违反它的规定？ |
| In the overall scheme of things, this is not a big deal. The information at issue – the personal identification numbers of Facebook users – probably has little value unless it can be combined with other types of personal information, and Facebook says it does not believe the data were collected. But the slip was instructive. | 从大局来看，此次事故并不要紧。争议中的信息——Facebook用户的个人识别码——可能没什么价值，除非能把它与其它类型的个人资料结合起来。而且Facebook表示，它不认为有人在蓄意收集这些资料。但这次事故颇具教育意义。 |
| The architecture of the new world of social networks and smartphones is starting to throw up some vexing questions of control. Unless they are resolved, a potentially highly profitable way of delivering services to consumers will fail to reach its full potential, as users shy away and regulators start to interfere. | 由社交网站和智能手机构成的新世界架构，开始带来一些令人头疼的隐私管控问题。这种向用户提供服务的新方式极富获利潜力，但若不解决这些管控问题，它的潜力将无法充分发挥出来。用户会敬而远之，监管部门也将开始干预。 |
| The Facebook issue echoed a US academic study last month which found that two-thirds of the apps tested on Google’s Android operating system (admittedly, a small sample of only 30) passed some kind of personal data on to advertisers. Like Facebook, Google has a strict rule forbidding this. | Facebook的问题呼应了美国上月的一项学术研究结果。该研究发现，在谷歌(Google)的Android操作系统上测试的应用软件中，有三分之二（当然，抽样总数仅为30）将某类个人资料透露给了广告商。与Facebook一样，谷歌对这种行为也有严格禁令。 |
| Previous technology platforms that won a mass audience have not been in the habit of handing out sensitive personal information like this. PCs, for instance, don’t automatically give data about their owners to whichever software applications are installed on the machine. And when the web emerged as the next mass computing platform, websites were in much the same position: users approached them anonymously, and could choose how much about themselves to reveal. | 以往那些拥有大量用户的技术平台，从来没有这般泄露敏感个人信息的习惯。例如，个人电脑不会自动将机主的资料提供给电脑里安装的任何一个软件。而当网络成为新的大规模计算平台后，情况也基本一样：用户匿名登陆网站，可自行决定向网站披露多少个人资料。 |
| True, that anonymity has been eroding fast. Cookies (which sit in computers and track the websites they visit) and beacons (code embedded on websites that monitors the behaviour of visitors) have become a fact of online life. | 诚然，匿名正迅速成为过去式。Cookies（潜伏在电脑里，跟踪用户访问的网站）和beacons（嵌入网站的代码，监控访问者的行为）已成为网络世界现实情况的一部分。 |
| However, the latest computing platforms – social networks and smartphones – go further, treating the passing on of personal information as a key design feature. In the case of Facebook, that means 550,000 different applications that do things such as draw on a user’s social connections and other personal information. Likewise, smartphone apps – of which Apple now has more than 300,000, by one estimate – often seek to tap into things such as a handset’s location and the user’s address book. | 不过，社交网络和智能手机这些最新的计算平台则更进一步，将传递个人资料当作一项重要设计特点。以Facebook为例：多达55万种不同的应用软件，在获取用户的社会关系及其它个人资料。同样，智能手机的应用程序——据估计，目前苹果(Apple)拥有逾30万个应用程序——也常常试图利用手机所处位置和用户通讯录等信息。 |
| Anyone using these apps must first give them permission to access personal data – and the platform companies have taken steps to make this process more explicit. But such permissions are often lightly given and quickly forgotten. | 任何使用这些应用程序的人，都必须先提供授权，允许这些程序访问个人资料，而平台公司已采取措施，让这一过程更加明晰。但用户往往轻率地提供授权，很快便忘记此事。 |
| This has been making regulators in Europe and Canada nervous. Facebook plays down the risks. It says that of the thousands of applications that it has banned, very few transferred user information without authorisation. By definition, though, transgressions like this are among the hardest to identify. | 这让欧洲和加拿大的监管部门感到不安。Facebook刻意淡化这类风险。该公司表示，在它封杀的数千个应用程序中，仅有极少数在未获授权的情况下就传递用户资料。可从定义角度来说，此类违规行为恰恰是最难认定的。 |
| The encouraging news is that the new platform companies have every incentive to improve the policing of their systems and reassure users. Shortly before its latest slip, for instance, Facebook took an important step by giving its users a way to see what data their apps had accessed. | 令人鼓舞的消息是，这些新平台公司有充分动机改进对自身系统的管控、让用户安心。例如，就在此次事故之前不久，Facebook采取了一项重要举措，让用户有途径了解该他们的应用程序获取了哪些资料。 |
| Ultimately, proving they have mastered their powerful new machines – and are prepared to hand more of the control to their users – will be the surest way for companies like this to make sure no one tries to take the keys away. | 最后，对于此类公司而言，只有证明自己已驾驭住了强大的新平台、并愿意将更多控制权交予用户，才是确保不会有人尝试窃取重要信息的最可靠做法。 |
| Richard Waters is the FT’s West Coast managing editor | 理查德•沃特斯(Richard Waters)是英国《金融时报》美国西海岸执行主编 |
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