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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."
Dear users:
Fuck you.
Cordially,
Mark Zuckerberg
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.
...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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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
No one will know if the Billy Smith they see on Facebook living "somewhere in Oregon" is B. Smith #36 in the phone book. If they can actually get that information off your profile the game changes completely.
And that time will come eventually. And it will apply to all your old data as well.
Companies are data mining like crazy. I never put personal information online, but since companies are scanning in public records and then connect that information, they do have my age, my address, two of my last three residences correctly identified, and got me linked correctly to my in-laws. The income bracket they guessed from the neighborhood.
Within the next couple years some company will be able to come up with a probabilistic algorithm that links this information to your face book account. People will be able to buy a profile of you that includes your personal data, all old blog posts (analyzed for character flaws) and some old college pictures of you, some friend had on line years ago. And a few more years and picture recognition software will be able to start with known pictures and then find you on other pictures, pattern recognition will be able to determine the likely author of anonymous rants. And that all can be done on old data, that was never meant to come back 20 years later.
Not magically but legally different: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2005/04/dnc.shtm. It is illegal to cold call mobile numbers and Facebook should be held liable for any crimes committed by the selling of this information.
On my new phone, I put in my facebook account for shits 'n giggles, and my phone imported my friends list and all their contact data. I now have a couple dozen phone numbers for people that I was never given directly by the owner. When that happened, I just kinda shook my head in wonder. Now with this story, I'm damn glad I've got absolutely minimal information on my facebook account.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Android only grabs information your friends have already made available to you. You can go any view any of those phone numbers manually on facebook.com when you're logged in. You're correct to warn friends that they are publishing a phone number, if you know they wouldn't want it published. This isn't android's fault though, it's just collecting the information your friends have made available to you on facebook.
Google 'knows' about your facebook account because you're presumably putting some information on your public profile; it looks at facebook account names, compares them to your google account name, and takes a guess at a match. It's trying to be helpful! I find adding facebook data to my phone quite handy, as there's contacts on there (with say, email addresses) that update their information when it changes, I don't have to update it manually my end. It also syncs with the calendar for birthdays, etc.
Note - it's a one way sync. Android (and google) don't put any of your google contacts into facebook. They just pull information from your logged in account to combine with your phone contacts. It doesn't copy any of it to your google contacts or phone contacts, it keeps them separate. It does auto show facebook contacts and google/phone contacts together when they have the same name. You can turn *that* off under the contacts settings, and you'll see them as entirely separate lists.
If you want to turn off the facebook integration, just goto settings/accounts and remove the facebook sync account you have there. That's what's linking your phone to facebook.
I don't know about the HTC app, but the samsung one that came with my phone uses the underlying android facebook sync. So when you logged into the facebook app, you gave it permission to well, connect to your facebook profile. Facebook do have their own official app and widget in the android market - IIRC, it does also autosync with contacts and calendar, but you can turn that off and still use the app.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.