Facebook is about to start testing its new gifting platform that will allow it another go at a possible revenue stream, but there’s a small problem: exposing information like home addresses, birth dates and other aspects could pose security and privacy risks.

Facebook used to have a gifting application that allowed users to send virtual gifts, but that was done away with in August 2010. But, they’re bringing it back – in the form of a real gifting system after its May acquisition of mobile e-commerce app Karma.

Said Facebook:

Choose a gift, attach a card and send. You can post your gift to your friend’s timeline or send it privately. Your friend can then unwrap a preview of the gift and it will show up on their doorstep a few days later.

The new system will initially be tested by a small number of people in the United States, of America, before rolling out elsewhere.

But security experts are already concerned. Bogdan Botezatu, a senior e-threat analyst at antivirus vendor Bitdefender:

The amount of private data users are sharing on social networking sites already exceeds all security precautions. Making it so much easier for the user to add a number of addresses they can receive parcels at (including probably work or school addresses) would make it even easier for real-life criminals to gather information about a potential victim. The new information that might be shared by users is particularly dangerous in the case of account compromise.

Botezatu then went on to state the next obvious flaw: home addresses combined with other information commonly shared by users on Facebook like status updates announcing “I’m off to the Seychelles for two weeks!”, pictures of houses or even news about recent high-value purchases, could make it very easy for burglars to select potential victims and plan raids accordingly.

The privacy debate shall continue, as Botezatu said:

There is one question we need to ask ourselves: how would our data turn against ourselves in the event our account gets breached and the information lands in the wrong hands? Are we ready to live in an ecosystem where social networks know our names, our relationship history, phone number, email address, shoe size and, on top of that, where we live with pinpoint precision?

[Source: PCWorld]