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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."
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.
And you trust FB to honor your choice of options?
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.
...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.
And you trust FB to honor your choice of options?
Which is the real problem.
Facebook is no longer just a website run by a couple of college kids. It is a business - a big business - and like any business their number one priority is making as much money as possible. This is especially true now that Goldman-Sachs has invested $500 million and is trying to get others to invest another Billion or so. No matter how much lip service is given to "privacy" it is no accident that their privacy settings are hard to figure out, don't really do anything and completely deleting a profile is difficult, assuming that they actually delete anything at all. This is by deliberate design because Facebook's business model demands that they must be able to sell your personal information to advertisers.
Phone numbers and home addresses are public knowledge already — it's called a phone book.
If you want to be ex-directory, then you wouldn't put this info on your Facebook profile in the first place.
Dear Mark,
Fuck you.
I wonder if this is a tactic to see just how much bullshit people will put up with.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
If you want to be ex-directory, then you wouldn't put this info on your Facebook profile in the first place.
You might put it there for your friends, especially if you were promised that this info would remain private or shared only with people you authorize.
To then suddenly have the rules change is just unconscionable.
But as long as people like you jump in to defend every privacy violation facebook comes up with we can all pretty much expect it to continue.
Or maybe it will just die when people finally realize the meat market isn't helping them or making them any happier.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I wonder if this is a tactic to see just how much bullshit people will put up with.
With each successful push by Facebook they can re-evaluate their company upwards and until they have reached the point where such a move threatens the perceived value of the company they will push further. Once they find the point at which the value is threatened they will revert the last change and sell up.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
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.
It always is. Every time Facebook introduces something, they just do it and see where it gets them... hoping some things people won't notice or care. Zuckerberg's own emails/texts have elucidated that he thinks Facebook's users are all suckers and idiots. He has no sense of ethics... every step is just to see what kind of privacy-violating crap they can push because their entire model is predicated upon out-of-sight/out-of-mind selling of information to third parties in lieu of in your face advertising.
Yup, that spelling is about the level of quality you'll find on Facebook. ;)
Amen.
I never set one up in the first place. Besides the huge amount of time it wastes, frankly, there's a reason I wasn't friends with people I went to school with and I have no desire to be online friends with them now.
Privacy is like virginity. It's tempting to give it away, but you never ever get it back.
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
...I could of kept going...
As a grammar Nazi you are an amateur. It's "could have" or perhaps "could've", not "could of".
Proverbs 21:19