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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.
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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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
...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.
It seem not jut your information, but also you friends.
I noticed this for some apps:
Access my friends' information
Birthdays, Religious and political views, Family members and relationship statuses, Significant others and relationship details, Home towns, Current locations, Likes, music, TV, movies, books, quotes, Activities, Interests, Education history, Work history, Online presence, Websites, Groups, Events, Notes, Photos, Videos, Photos and videos of them, 'About me' details and Facebook statuses
Why on earth would Facebook want to give this information to third parties, and worse to ones you have not given permission to, but your friend has.
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...
It really is a gold mine for identity theft in the wrong hands.
Most phone support for companies only need Phone number, address and DOB for an identity confirmation and all it takes is for someone to get access to someone's credit card account for them to be able to completely steal their identity for dodgy bankloans or being able to get drivers licenses/passports.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_directory
I grew up when phone numbers were public information. Everybody had a book where you could look up the phone number and address of anyone in the area. A few people were unlisted at their own request, but this was the exception.
Phone numbers and addresses were treated as public knowledge.
When cell phones first arrived, receiving calls cost money, so cell phone numbers were kept private. Now that the cost of incoming calls is much, much lower, there's little need to keep treating these things as private, especially with people replacing land lines with cell phones.
The problem lies not with facebook making this data available; the problem lies with everyone who pretends this is secret information to begin with. Some companies consider your phone number to be a unique identifier. Other (idiotic) companies treat it as an authenticator...something nobody else knows. Mix those two and BAD SHIT HAPPENS.
SSNs are treated the same way. Some places use them for identification and others use them as a freaking password. Frequently an individual bank or credit provider will be using a SSN as both a username and password simultaneously. THAT is the heart of the problem.
Would knowing the address for the White House help you steal Obama's identity. No, because everybody knows that is public knowledge. The problem is the people who think "wow, this guy knows his own address, so he obviously must be who he claims to be, because nobody else would know that"
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
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.