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Facebook Opens Up Home Addresses and Phone Numbers
An anonymous reader writes "Do you really want third-party app developers on Facebook to be able to access your mobile phone number and home address? Facebook has announced that developers of Facebook apps can now gather the personal contact information from their users. Security firm Sophos describes it as 'a move that could herald a new level of danger for Facebook users' and advises users to remove their home address and phone numbers from the network immediately."
I wanted this. Now to post when Ex is on vacation, and let THEM CLEAN HIM OUT !!
Dear users:
Fuck you.
Cordially,
Mark Zuckerberg
You would be FUCKING STUPID to put your home address and phone numbers on facebook at all..
3rd party devs want access to people who are that stupid. they are worth money. alot of money.
I don't see any issue here.
Easier option :
Account - Privacy Settings - Apps and Websites (Bottom) - Turn off platform apps
Bye bye Farmville / Cafe World / Fortune cookie notifications.
Bye bye info sharing with ueseless apps.
I have yet to find anything I miss from that pile of junk.
Giving any App developer access to peoples contact details is just an insane move if FB is meant to be making things more secure for their users.
Having someone's address and phone number makes identity theft so much easier.
How about you remove all of your posts, pictures and delete your account immediately?
If this doesn't wake people up, absolutely nothing will.
I never put information that detailed up there in the first place. Partially for this sort of reason, but also partially because not everyone on my friends list needs to know all of it (or would care if it was there). Anyone who would want to know, already does.
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Quote:
"advises users to remove their home address and phone numbers from the network immediately"
I think it may a bit too late for that..
If FB will share that data, then I suspect they will share their backup data as well..
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
I mean, really, did anybody actually expect facebook to not sell your information to the highest bidder? If you put up real information, expect it to be used. The solution: LIE like a rug! Tell them your home address is 1060 W Addison, Chicago, IL (yeah, that one's kinda lame, copying SNL is good only for laughs). Tell them your phone number is 555-1212. Whatever, be creative.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
Stupid is as stupid does.
If you a) put your address and phone number online and b) click to specifically allow an application to access them, too fucking bad if something bad happens.
I'm so tired of the complete lack of personal responsibility these days.
I image facebook development to be like a gameshow. They place bets on what changes they need to make to ruin privacy, until an amount of people actually leave.
I'm sure the next step will be medical records, legal records or naked pictures.
Knowing the origins of Facebook, did anyone expect MZ to be a beacon of ethical behavior?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Why exactly would you enter that information into Facebook in the first place? I don't have an FB account so I don't know whether it's useful for anything. Anyone? Perhaps the city you're in, but what would your street address be needed for when sharing photos and such?
Similarly with your mobile number: is there some crucial functionality that needs valid data and not something like 111-555-1212?
But it's right there on the app install warning page. FB isn't silently doing this.
"THIS APPLICATION WILL COLLECT YOUR MOBILE PHONE NUMBER AND ADDRESS."
and so on...
If you are the kind of user that ignores warnings, you have much bigger problems than this on your hands.
Clueless people like the guy in the Twitter screenshot setting his phone number to the FB customer support is an idiot. Why? Just. Do. Not. Approve.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
...delete your account! Well, at least do your best to delete as much of it as you can. As soon as I learnt years ago that you could never delete your Facebook account I knew never to sign up to that rubbish. And Facebook have vindicated my decision every step of the way ever since.
You'd be a complete nutjob to be using Facebook. I hope that Diaspora is made available to the public in some form this year, though I'm reasonably content with Twitter.
Yeah, delete all you want now. Next Facebook will open up the history for every field. Think of the cool 'dating/breakup timeline' an application could build.
Yet another example of why facebook is a sack of shit company that doesn't care about their user privacy.
Some one should post the personal and banking info for every employee of facebook online.
I am glad I have never used that steaming turd ... zuckerface is a lying asshole.
Troll me if you want, but, while i do find this appalling, i cant feel sympathetic to people who post up their personal, private information for their "friends" to see and then later become victims. There's no valid reason for people to put it up and just leaves them vulnerable to exploitation (see previous facebook slashdot story), especially if you're not required to post it (and if you were, use fake data). Someone wants your address? let them ask it you for it.They want to call you? let them ask you for your phone number in person. Or by private email. At the very least you'll have control over who gets it and who does not, rather than people you randomly friended over time and have no idea who they are (yes, it happens).
I've kept my profile (almost) empty for over a year now - believe me when i say you won't miss your data not being up there for the world to see...
I will ask this again: Why didn't MySpace gain from the hate for Facebook here on Slashdot?
Don't ever use any personal information on any service except a throwaway e-mail address.
Don't ever subscribe to any social web service.
Personally, I have never subscribed to any social web service and i still enjoy a decent personal life. Any information I want to share with friends or family is on a personal webpage on a private server.
I'm sick of them taking liberties as they see fit.
1. Friends Un-Friended
2. Profile gutted of everything
3. Account deleted
4. Profit for Z! *not from me*
This isn't a problem for me because I don't put my address or phone number on Facebook. And within 2 minutes of me reading this on Slashdot, the good lady was informed and now she has removed her phone number.
I also don't allow ANY apps. I use Facebook to keep in contact with people, not as a pass-time.
What I see as the real problem for the greater Facebook population is when, inevitably, Facebook allows advertisers (or anyone else who will pay) carte blanche access to people's profile information without their permission or knowledge.
There are two facts here:
1. Facebook's business model relies on advertisers being able to access people's information.
2. Generally people do not want advertisers to access their information.
I am sure there will come a time when Facebook decides that the siter's users don't need to be involved in the decision about who has access to their information.
What would make you want to give Facebook your address in the first place? I don't mind ZIP code, but nothing more specific than that.
Further, why give out your phone number? Unless you are a business, why does Facebook need it? Worst case, get a Google Voice account number and have your calls forwarded.
Even more foolish is giving out your complete birthday. I can see how it is nice to get greetings on your birthday, but it's not worth the extra info for identify fraud. Put in 1900 (or whatever they first allow) and the 1st day of the week you're born. You still get nice birthday wishes at about the right time.
Does Facebook have a fart app yet? Maybe I should make one and just watch the address & phone numbers roll in.
The apple 1984 commercial is getting more and more ironic every day now.
Like us on Facebook.
That one is the one I hate worst. Yes, it's a short way to say you like or hate a comment, but when you need to post a "Facebook like" to a person or company to get a warm fuzzy it's time to admit your social skills are all but gone.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Hopefully this will hurry along the end of Facebook, condemning it to live out its days with AOL and the like. It's truly an annoying entity since so many people use it, and so many people are dumb.
I know this agreement is voluntary and not monitored until after the fact but EU citizen have contrary to their US brethren far more privacy protection.
Would these third parties misuse the gained information on EU citizen this could bring them grief, the ex-competition officer has a few months ago taken on the responsibility of the digital agenda.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I was at a gathering yesterday. Met a few new people, nice guys, and I asked one of them for his phone number. I handed him my phone (with the "new contact" sheet open) to type his number, and after a few minutes I started to wonder what kind of novel he's typing in my phone. I'm kinda wary of people snooping through my contacts, so I asked him for the phone back. His response "one sec, I gotta fill in the work place".
Usually, I expect a name (not necessarily the real one, some handle to identify a person with) and a phone number. What I got from this person was name, address, 2 phone numbers, work phone, workplace, address of work and a few more tidbits that I wouldn't even give a fuck about if I tried to go for ID theft.
People really don't give half a shit about their personal data. And I honestly wonder whether my work makes me simply overly paranoid. Am I? Most people that know me know me by some nickname or handle, few acquaintances outside of work have my real name. I also rarely "reuse" a nick, usually different groups of people know me by different names (and hence, Opportunist is not used anywhere else).
So am I too paranoid or are people too careless?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If people were stupid enough to put that shit up in the first place, what makes anyone think that they'd be smart enough to take it down now?
You can already get most of that information online. Last time I used 411.com they gave me phone number, complete postal address and even a handy map. Google the person's name and you get everything else they've done on the 'net in the past couple decades. So curse facebook if you must, then back into the sand with that head...
They can not release any personal information that you DO NOT PROVIDE to them.
I too hate this crap, but too many people do not take privacy seriously and provided the information in the past, therefore, they (companies) have no reason not to expect you to follow and give them information like you have in the past. They believe we are all sheeple!
Too many social networking sites want to lock you into bad OAuth sites, like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Too many people forget that as soon as they have any piece of information related to you and a single phone call, monthly bill, purchase, email account, etc, they know exactly who you are.
Are you willing to stop using a site that violates your privacy? Most are not, therefore giving a nod to the company that wants to violate our privacy.
Security and privacy go hand in hand. Privacy requires you to maintain a singular mind set to maintain your privacy and not get lazy. If you give up and provide the information because someone says you should not have anything to hide, its game over from a privacy perspective. Once you slip up and give out any private information, its just one small step from putting the pieces together and identifying who you are, what you are looking at in order to market to you. Of course who besides marketers are using this info for what other purposes will never be fully disclosed to you, ever.
Our Credit information, another privacy sink, which contains all our personal information is too tightly inter-twined with our lives now, as if your credit determines what type of driver you are and should relate in any way to increasing the amount you pay for insurance. Pathetic.
Is your browser secure? Can you tightly control not just regular cookies but Flash cookies as well? With Firefox + Linux (Banish Flash cookies forever under Linux) you can. Chrome is in bed with Adobe and Flash so they will never provide a viable option to delete tracking cookies. Internet Explorer was never meant to keep information about you private, ever. What other browsers let you delete Flash cookies on a regular basis? Even with Firefox, a reboot of my PC is required to delete the stupid Flash tracking cookies, but at least I can do that with Linux!
In all cases, a company can not reveal what you do not provide to them. Do they really need your phone number? Really, REALLY, grow a pair and say NO! Where else might you get the info, there are always other options. Do they really need your email account info? Do they really need a credit card? There are always other options, granted some might not be as convenient, but they are out there if you are willing to expend the energy to seek them out.
If you are not willing to spend some time to protect your privacy, than you are probably not reading this right now.
While all sites should OPT OUT by DEFAULT, we know they do not and we know why. Of course you do not have to use that site! You have choices. If you only have two choices, you have no real choice. Sometimes you just have to say NO! Sometimes, as in this case, you have to say H8ll NO!
Is your Internet Throttled? Install DD-Wrt, OpenWRT or Tomato to learn the truth! Google: 1Gbps/1Gbps: 5 Communities
First, I am totally in favor of keeping my info that I've added to FB under the same privacy controls I used when I setup my profile. Unlike what most of the print/television media has reported, users aren't storing their SIN number's or credit card info within their Facebook profile, and I would hope as a user you wouldn't list your full proper home address on your FB profile page. So really what type of info could someone seriously gather from your profile (on a public website) if everything you had listed on there today was made public? The reason for my subject title, is it seems whenever its a slow news day the media will simply start a new defamatory story about some aspect of the FB privacy controls. Also, please try and remember that just like browsing the web, you dont simply just click on any pop up that comes your way. Why should adding applications to your FB page be any different? The "rogue applications mentioned in the article sound somewhat ominous, and one hopes users are somewhat intelligent and stick with the more well known and more mainstream applications (farmville/cityville/etc) when selecting which applications to add to their profile
The problem still is that you will STILL appear on facebook. Your friends and family will end up posting your pictures no matter how many times you remind them not to.
Those same people will play farmville, take quizzes and use any other useless application, giving out their and, by proximity, your information.
Even if I have no facebook account. Faceboook can still connect the dots and know sufficiently about me to merchandise, inspect, etc.
Am I being overly paranoid? Maybe.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
I don't even have a facebook profile... but facebook is tracking me via the friends who have invited me to join facebook via the same email address. Eventually facebook combines the information from two of my email addresses to get an even better idea of my social network.
Of course, google is doing this in a multitude of ways as well with every website I visit that contains adwords, google analytics etc... all those free services they offer websites. See, they do get something out of it.
The scary part is when Google and Facebook start ASKING YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT YOU. A big social faux-pas.. but on the internet maybe not so bad? Facebook already encourages this with face identification in pictures as does google ( who hides their face id because it's too spooky ). Check out face.com and tell me they aren't allowing paying customers more access to facebook face recognition over their database. If this was the government we'd be crying bloody murder... heck, maybe this is the government? Doesn't matter.. they can get access whenever they want.. or will eventually. Google and Facebook will fight publicly about it but higher powers will find a way ( as will criminal elements and spying countries).
My concern is that I'm being left behind technologically and even socially by not buying in to the social networks. Heck, I hear companies are less likely to hire you if you aren't on Linked-in.
It seems like there is a lot of FUD going around about this and things like it. Facebook got its act together mostly on the privacy thing and if you actually take the time to configure your privacy it offers you very good control. It's also up front about what information is accesible to applications when you install them. Pretty much you just need to not install anything that you don't trust - it's no different than installing software on your computer.
Personally I would like if everyone used Facebook for their contact information. That way my contacts stay up to date automatically on my phone. Just, again, be careful who you give that information to. I think they've struck a good balance between privacy and usability at this point.
or else!
Sounds like he was giving his visiting card.
what the hell are you doing putting your address and phone number on Facebook in the first place?
And this would be why all of my info in there is false to begin with! Thank u ill take my privacy into my own hands. If I ever get on the p.o.s.
... that the data will actually be removed vs archived or "marked as deleted". You should never have put that information out there to begin win. I'm relatively confident that in 10 years people will be wishing that they never signed up and updated FaceBook. Their past will haunt them... kinda like my old UseNet posts. Ah they days when all you had to do was hack a BBS and format the HD to remove all of your unflattering history were glorious.
Facebook is getting too invasive. Every website that has a "like this" button can find out some information about you. Facebook probably knows more about your online habits than Google. They WILL sell this information, too. Unlike Google, they have no other interest in collecting it than to resell it to data miners. They have a history of not respecting your privacy.
Don't put up with FB any more. Delete your account. Log in and go to this URL:
http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account
Clear out your facebook cookies to make sure that the deletion sticks (it will be reverted if you log in within two weeks, including via those websites that have FB widgets on them). I have done this and I am happier: I know my friends better. I have a fuller social life and I spend much less time on meta-socializing (all the things that go into organizing a social life, like FB). It is great.
Now I know why it has been pestering me for that information lately. "$Number of your friends live in $City, [Click to make $City your hometown] [Not your hometown? What is?]"
Dumb fucks....
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I took out a Facebook account, but made it in the name of our family pet. Nobody needs to know you are a dog on the Internet.
It is time, past time actually, for some of you outraged coders to "put your money (skills) where your mouth is." A program, something simple, delayed action, that corrupts random data over the entire DBase. Make Facebook, and Zuckermans' empire, unreliable and and useless to marketers. Something with staying power, that can replicate and transfer as a trojan, to the purchasers DBases. Something toxic.
OK, do we need to go over this again? Any information that you wouldn't write on a giant poster and hang up in a public place should NOT be in Facebook. Period.
Hi. This is 2 years from now. You gave us the missing piece of the puzzle to narrow down which Billy Smith you are. Now the game changes completely.
Regards, Marketers in 2012
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
This is why I always use:
1060 W. Addison Street, Chicago, Illinois 60613
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
WTF are they smoking? How does this benefit anyone at all? There is no reason whatsoever that any strangers would need this info, especially other companies. They already can pinpoint me to a general area from my ip if I don't bother with trying to cover myself. This to me is a breech as big as someone finding credit card numbers. Yeah I may be in the phone book but there are a lot of people in the phone book. This points a big bulls-eye right on you specfically.
probably wouldn't matter if you did remove your personal information anyways, doesn't facebook have an M.O. of keeping user info even if they delete their information.
If any of you had bothered to read TFA, you'd notice that sharing your address and phone number is entirely optional for the user on a per-app basis. They just split the "Request for Permission" dialog into two options instead of one: 1. Access my basic information (the only option up until now) and 2. Access my contact information. Why anyone would actually choose the second option is beyond me (maybe they anticipate someone developing some sort of app that sends notifications via text messages), but it's not as if they're forcing you to share the information, or even making it likely that you'd accidentally share it.
cp /dev/zero ~/signature.txt
"But you want to connect with everyone! And there was no way to do that before!"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Sometime around 1993 to 1995 I bought my first mobile. The telephone company had this weird idea of publishing a paper white pages directory of mobile numbers and as in their minds mobiles were only for business use back then wanted me to pay to be in this directory.
When I said I wasn't prepared to pay the nice lady at the phone company call centre discovered that the only way to drop me from this directory was to make my phone confidential & unlisted where it stays to this day.
This means caller-id doesn't work on voice calls, but does show up on text messages. I suppose one day there could be a negative to this but until then I can't be bothered spending an hour on hold to have it done.
BTW I don't have the same phone, nor exactly the same number but somehow the setting always transfers
is the word your looking for. Sweats under difficult questions, cold emotionless responses during interviews, lots of public comments showing he doesn't care one bit if his company directly or indirectly causes harm.
so I'm really getting a kick out of these replies.
Users have to agree to a specific extended permission. A box will pop up that says 'Do you want to share your phone number and address with this application?' and then you say yes or no. If you don't want to share your location, as the summary implies, just don't click yes. Problem solved. This is a non-story that is only on Slashdot because it has decided that Facebook is bad. I don't see a similar story about iPhone applications where you can choose to (*shock horror*) share your current location obtained by GPS! Quick, everyone stamp on your iPhones!
FB was started with 'They just trust me. Dumb fucks.' attitude. Same sleazebag is still in charge.
This is a privacy story, and the arguments fall along the three levels of sophistication:
The above two are pretty well represented already! So let's crank things up:
Previously, a business could indeed get your phone number and address... by looking it up in a telephone directory. A manual process, or at best, a not-too-reliable automated process.
They could also get your friends list, through a not-too-reliable automated process (scraping Facebook, or inferring it from what your friends have said about you). If that was worth anything to them.
They could buy a copy of your ad viewing preferences and buying preferences, from marketers. And of course they could get generalised data on your demographic.
It's when a business can get all of the above, and correlate it with each other on an accurate and automated basis, that things start getting scary.
Once they have your address, they can turn it into a long/lat and get a picture of your home from Google Street View. They can get a list of your wi-fi networks. And probably other interesting things - also on an accurate and automated basis. Back in the day when information was hard to acquire, it wasn't worth it. And granted, even today it still may not serve a business purpose. But now this stuff is easy to piece together...
Don't get me wrong: they could do all these things before; it was just prohibitively difficult. Every time Facebook does something like described today, the bar gets lowered...
I could mention the utter pointlessness of putting phone numbers and addresses on facebook to begin with, no matter how private you have it, because everyone who's already your super duper bestest friends probably already have that information. But apparently you can't make sense out of human nature. People can instruct their children time and again to not take candy from strangers, but as soon as the icecream truck rolls by, hoardes of kids come chasing it down. Well, of course we don't mean THAT stranger.. we mean all the OTHER strangers. Of course, on facebook, who's really a stranger? If you have 1000 facebook "friends", how many of those are really FRIENDS. In fact, how many of them do you really know at all? Yet you freely fork over your personal details to those people... because they're "friends".
So what does it really matter if facebook is going to introduce one more potentially privacy threatening interface? The people who would be affected by it don't really care much about their privacy anyway. Everyone else is smart enough to not HAVE any private contact information on there in the first place. So.. yeah.. carry on. Nothing to see here.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Why take all the fun out of life? Having strangers turn up at your house knowing everything about you just adds spice to life!
I've spent the afternoon working with the Facebook API.
As far as I can tell you can only get this information if the user specifically allows you access to it.
If you have a sample of code that gets around this, please post.
Otherwise, STFU.
Just because you don't post things that compromize your security, doesn't mean these things don't get posted...
Remember that Adam Savage thing?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/technology/personaltech/12basics.html
Well, he finally turned off geotagging, but this image could have just as easily been taken by his friend and posted to facebook and the photo tagged with his name.
I don't even have a facebook account and all my friends seem to tag me in their photos anyhow. There's not much I can do about this.
Ahh the wonders of a fully hyperlinked facebook...
There is one simple thing to keep in mind: the real customer that Facebook cares for is not you, but the advertisers. They are the ones who bring revenue to them.
What you get is some web pages to play with, in exchange of the personal information and eyeball time that you give to their paying customers.
Where do I click "dislike" exactly...
Just another ignorant American.
I am so glad we all get our asses fucked by Mr Suckerberg enormous iPenis...
FFS WHEN WILL PEOPLE WAKE UP AND REALIZE THEY ARE BEING FUCKED OVER AND OVER BY iCorporates...
--
www.twilightcampaign.net
Haha
Heres an idea people instead of looking at your friends on facebook, go visit them in real life and then you can talk to them and dlete all your shit on facebook.
hth
Unless you want "Them" to find you.
Can my karma get any worse than bad? Let's find out!
Interesting sig. I reckon the history is a bit like this:
I suspect that it will actually be people tiring of trivial comments and false relationships that brings down the current generation of social networks, but if the bad guys start exploiting all the privacy holes then that might see a move to more open, encrypted platforms first. In the long run, I suspect the social aspect will become much more distributed and personal, and centralised web sites will go back to being driven more by expert, or at least editorially controlled, content, rather than just repeating every little contribution from every user, spammer and troll under the sun.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
n/t
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Next facebook will want everyone's credit card number, so you easily log in to other sites to buy stuff with your facebook. Can you say facebook's version of paypal?
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
It was a past time paradise but then it became a gangsters paradise but Al made it an Amish paradise so now I'm in a stalkers paradise. So now I'm living in a stalkers paradise where eye color, hair color, body type, blood type, name, address, phone number, IM handle and bust size are readily available to the erstwhile stalker. I suppose next Facebook will put up a handy app to allow you to specify who you will stalk and make it easy with an integrated Greyhound bus schedule.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
if anyone stole my id they'd be begging me to take it back within the week
The worst is: people I know, uploading *my* data to Facebook to sync their addressbook against. I don't even have a f*cking facebook account and can do nothing against it. We will all pay dearly for this.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
I might post that something is going on in the area I live in, but I don't post street address or GPS co-ordinates or phone numbers.
... so FB gets your IP address, instead, runs it via a location service, then get your current location anyway... FB just turned your "useless shit" into gold.
If Facebook offered a "pro" version of the site with free extras (like bonus cheats for Farmville and other FB games), and the only condition was the user input their SSN and mother's maiden name, I'd venture to guess that plenty of FB users would sadly go along with it, even if the privacy settings to hide those two elements were added.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Ya'll blame FB, but I think I'm tossing Google in the "bad guys" column for now because it was the GOOGLE phone book which, um, "raped" my FB friends' accounts without asking. (Wait for it:)
New android phone yesterday (HTC Incred., Froya build, not rooted yet), I sign in with Google which is okay (or *was*). That shit knew one of my facebooks! Asked me to log in; I didn't. I went online with laptop to Google Accounts, and it's got some "suggestions" of FB and other accounts that MAY be mine. (I'm still considering major deletion of Google incl. Gmail, plus FB; not sure what to do).
Today I use the HTC Facebook app and log in, thinking it was separate from the Android, but I guess FB can "talk to" Google apps? — and my PHONE CONTACTS list was suddenly, um, ENHANCED. Noted, some phone contacts I had addresses and other info (not birthdays, etc), but now my phone contacts are all LINKED to their facebook accounts, and I've got phone contacts I didn't have before.
Noted, I haven't had much time to investigate this, because I feel like I've RAPED my FB friends. (I'm ACTIVELY working on this w/ my most paranoid friends first.)
I never put my private stuff on FB accts, EVER, even the 'real' emergency FB acct one with only a few family members as friends — they KNOW how to contact me. And my phone number hasn't [yet?] been added to FB. But now, my Android phone book contacts include FB frends that weren't on my phone originally, and my phone contacts have more information (their FB stuff, I guess) that I didn't enter on my own.
Now maybe it is the FB app (which came with the Android phone) that allowed for this; or user error (I'm new to Android); but I'm messaging the affected FB friends that either they remove what they don't want public, or adjust the privacy settings. My BEST advice is what I read above: delete FB. I'm contacting Verizon tomorrow with some complaints about privacy; even if FB puts it out, their android phones with pre-installed apps like FB shouldn't grab it (esp not without my express approval).
...my address has always been "VAN! DOWN BY THE RIVER!" on Facebook.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
Is "friends" who give away my privacy by adding my private details to their own Facebook account (or whatever).
It's like those who click on the "Send this page to a friend" button on a web page and volunteer my private details to a third-party.
I don't have a Facebook account and take my privacy quite seriously. However it is increasingly threatened by careless morons. AKA my friends and family.
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
That's all there is to it.
If you posted your home address on FB you're an idiot and you deserve to be tracked down and publicly humiliated. Then again I can't talk...I'm homeless.
It looks like a preemptive cleanup scheme to me, as follows:
FB users starting to get worried by the increasing invasion of their privacy or intimidated by the media warning them they'd better leave or frightened by the stories they hear from their friends will eventually close their accounts. Such users are useless to FB and currently represent a waste of storage space and FB resources. So why not force them out as soon as possible with little bumps of scare tactics and just do business with the rest hundreds of millions who will sheepishly share their every dirty little secret online?
Sounds like a plausible strategy to me - cheap, effective and certainly increasing the percentage of marketable private information per Terabyte of storage.
All you can do is create another throw-away eMail address, move yout FaceBook to that throw-away eMail address, change the registration information of FaceBook Registration to match that throw-away eMail address, then un-register. Here's the kicker: let the throw-away eMail address expire, then go to FaceBook to pretend to be an Arab trying to recover that throw-away eMail address and FaceBook Account because it's on your throw-away eMail address that was picked-up by your fictitious Arab. Then the Arab contacts FaceBook to get a restraining order against your real name from ever being confused as your real name; get one of those prepaid Visa Vanilla Debit Cards to order some cheap cornmash and goats from some Tack and Feed shop deliverable to some Congressman in Washington DC courtesy of the Arab that wants you dead for trying to register him on his behalf. Maybe you can even pretend some of your College Debt was actually from the Arab, so make sure he gets a bus ticket to Mexico that FaceBook tracks him as leaving the country. And finally, you can feel vindicated that the albino Arab closes the account...or else he'll slash your tires, not you!
Account --> Account Settings --> Privacy --> Apps and Websites --> Turn off platform apps. Easy done. (I hope... but you never know with FB...)
you voluntarily give away your private information to some company that is making profit with user data, and complain when they make money with your data ? you all shot your own foot and comlain about it now, laughable really.
Why hide or delete personal information? Instead, fill all those fields with rubbish. Each one these sites that ask for all sorts of personal information like DoB, Schools, Work places, IM handles, Blog URLs, Home town, home address etc. Fill out each profile on every site in as much detail as you can. Only use your real name. Everything else should be borrowed. Next time a marketer buy *your* profile information, they will get junk. Anyone who Google's you will get five different people with your name who actually do not exist (if you fill out all info on five different sites like FB, flickr, MySpace etc). Make sure you fill out different information on each site. Spread the information geographically as much as possible so like you were born in Ethiopia, studied in Russia, worked in France and now live in Japan. For work places, pick companies that are now bankrupt and liquidated.
... it seems i'm too dumb for this discussion .. 3rd party applications can access your phone number and home address if you explicitly give this one application permission to do so... what is the big deal? the applications can't access those informations from friends of the users or from existing users.. just from users who give them permissions
Find me at http://herbert.poul.at
Yea, or just stop to use stupid apps.
Come to think of it, we should petition to remove "Share on Facebook" from the sharethis widgets! I bet they get too much income (read:payoffs) that side to even consider it though.
Facebook is no more evil this week than it was last. According to the article, apps can now request access to your private info. When an app requests your ifno, you can say yes or no. If you trust facebook to implement this as stated (one poster has already tried it and found it to be as described), then what's the big deal? Apps could also just ask you for your social security number, or your credit card numbers, this just makes it easier for users who were going to be agreeable. Who cares? And if you don't trust facebook, then you don't have private information on there anyway. So again, what's the big deal? This is a complete non-story that's been escalated into some kind of scare story by people who can't read.
It's a rotting cesspool of depravity, where bottom feeders prey upon the users (ie: Zynga games) and where the master (Facebook itself) is constantly shifting the ground around and NEVER to the user's benefit.
I've never used Facebook and I never will. They won't be able to give out my information to the highest bidder because they don't HAVE it in the first place.
Corporatism != Free Market
How about a petition to remove the Facebook 'like' buttons from the Slashdot front page? I cringe a little every time I see them.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
... why Facebook was suddenly after my phone number for "security purposes".
Into the future, I see facebook
1) tying all info of personal nature for someone together, where the gov. failed to do so...
imagine if you could tie in all your personal data, so you only need to access one point to get to it.
medical records, drivers license passport, etc..etc..
then you would only need your facebook id and also a terminal to access it, and you coudl even add in your retinal scan and fingerprints
2) making a one stop place for all info instead of too many places for many diff. things.
all gov. and country agencies, would go to facebook for all sorts of info...maybe not the bad stuff( or maybe even so...)
cops go there for your fingerprints, banks go there for your info when they need to see who you are...
customs agents would go there to see your travel history and also your passport id
etc...
3) eliminating identity theft using a public sector as means of proof to peronality and identity.
If everything si there, even your cell phone no and address, then nothing is private, then no one can copy you as you are already visible to the world, identity theft is only possible if there can be doubt as to who the person looks like, or
what there signature is, if all this is already on facebook, and when you go apply for a loan, facebook tied into the banks system, they would see the person is not who they are intending to be, where as today, so many fraud theft are happening because the info is just not there...
4) Security, if facebook got to the point, i think they are aiming for, then they would x4 in value if not more, i am sure they could come up with a very secure way of regulating the data, even from hackers on the inside, say a journal is done every
month, and logged somewhere, then any changes are flagged for point checks later, then if someones picture has changed and say a facial recognition software analyses that the changes are too great (someone adding a picture to change the original for a scam or identity theft or something) then they could send an email to the admins who would then contact that person etc....the possibilities are endless!
To many people the internet is nothing more than a complicated computing environment where they only know how to use Facebook, send e-mails, and click on "congratulations" pop-ups at wack-a-mole speed. These internet users see that their friends and family are connected to them online and assume that it's there own private network -- Facebook's privacy settings can be pretty good when used properly - but they're still too confusing for the general public. Either way, no matter how good Facebook's privacy controls can be - it is still a business entity at the end of the day - and the bottom line is that you are of no use to the company (Facebook) if you can't help them reach their business objectives in some way. In fact, nothing is "private" on the web unless you own the server that your data is getting stored on ... and even still - you're at risk of having your data accessed by cunning techies.
This is a pretty cool article introducing the long-term risks of large-scale social networking websites: http://www.machetemag.com/large-scale-public-social-networking-websites-are-long-term-risks-to-user-safety/
I used to spend more time on FB. Used a desktop, laptop, iphone. Played zynga games. Did the various "Here I am at such and such" updates.
Then one day, I got this pink alert that said, "You need to enter your mobile phone number and we will send you a text with a validation number. Until then, your account is frozen."
Knowing FB's privacy issues and lacking a convenient throw down phone (I did try the google phone but it didn't work), I simply dropped the account and started a new one.
I use it a lot less. Since I lost all Zynga game progress, I stopped playing Zynga games. I posted on Zynga and got about 160 responses from others who had the same thing happen to them.
Apparently multiple people using the same IP address (a common family situation) sets this off- perhaps in combination with Zynga games. FB desires to have a hard identification to a real person behind each account. That would make the accounts more valuable to sell as information.
I cut my FB usage to 20-30 minutes a week. Mainly reading up on friend's status and posting a simple text status occasionally. Not going to invest in something that can be taken away at any time. Not going to give FB my mobile number or real address.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Both?
Anyways, it's not like you're paranoid, unless it's actively affecting your life negatively. If you're happy with your life and not having any problems, then you're doing fine. No need to worry about about being too private or paranoid or anything.
I generally use a different username on every site, but there's occasionally a bit of overlap (eg, using the same name in an online game and its forums). Sometimes I reuse a favorite username, too. I don't really care if a site (or its users) know my gender, age, or city. After that, I start getting a bit miffed, such as race (wtf? why do you need to know if I'm white, black, or asian?), employment, salary, zip code, etc. If a site asks me any of those questions, I usually just cancel the signup process and find something less invasive.
Depending on my mood, I may even add IM or e-mail, like I have on slashdot. I don't care if Slashdotters contact me, as long as they don't call me on the phone. I'd like to think that they'd have something interesting to say, if they did contact me, unlike most people. Plus, you never know when you'll pique someone's interest and develop a genuine friendship. It's very rare, but it does happen.
I guess it can be boiled down to: if you're a human, I don't mind if you know my private details, but I do not want to be cataloged or made into a statistic, unless I'm getting a cut of the money you make from using my details.
I usually continue with the registration, always keeping in mind "what information will cause the least or at least the easiest to identify spam".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Were you really ignorant enough to put that info into Facebook?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Spokeo trolls the internet looking for accounts for everyone. It collects the publicly available information about you and puts it in their directory. You may find that it publishes your address, phone number, pictures from online accounts, income, work address, a street view pic of your home, the value of your home, etc. Look yourself up, then when you are shocked by how much it knows about you, remove yourself by searching your name, copy the URL of your page, then go to the bottom right corner of the page and click on the Privacy button to remove yourself.
-- QED
To anyone who is seriously concerned about this, there is one thing that beats me... why on earth would you want to put your phone number and home address on facebook?
lmao'd
Why would you type your home address into a social networking site anyway? Facebook is a tool, not an evil parasite. It can't do anything with info you don't give it. Wah wah wah wah, all the way home.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I microwaved my FuckedBook some time ago.
Set everything to false information and left it that way for a while till it was baked.
Since I had moved house and some other details had changed too, the timing was very opportune.
Picking the apps off was a slow process, they are worse than lice.
Then I deleted everything.
Then I dug through the instructions and told the account to delete itself.
Several months (yes months, as in those things with 4 weeks in them) later, I checked on it and it was indeed dead.
The data is archived somewhere in Fuckedbook's vaults but at least it is misleading and noisy now, and not accessible to the outside world.
If you insist on using that piece of garbage javascript monstrosity, then I strongly urge you to falsify all information on it. Including photographs.
I just updated it:
1; DROP DATABASE 'mysql';
------DO NOT WRITE BELOW THIS LINE------