"Nor did we ... encourage users"
Yeah, because nobody associates the highlighted option with being the default activity and therefore good for you. Encouraging steps in the right direction, Zuckerberg, but only baby ones.
To the dismay of some, Facebook will indeed introduce a new feature that gives users the option of sharing their home addresses and cellphone numbers with third-party application developers. Facebook managers are still working out specifics, but under a plan the company outlined late last month, the site would allow users to …
on earth would anyone want to share their real contact details with Facebook let alone a third party application developer whom Facebook have deemed trustworty.
I can understand the motive for Facebook. All that information about a user in a public profile tied to a name, address and telephone number is a philosophers stone for advertisers. Expect ads on Facebook to become a great deal more targeted.
Facebook security is not the greatest, how long will it take for a misconfiguration or hack to expose all those contact details? Not to mention the unknown security measures and privacy policies employed by those third parties the data is shared with.
No thanks, I don't need Facebook to pass on my contact details to those whom I wish to have it. Sharing my contact details has been problem free for as long as I remember. Nor would I want Facebook to pass them on to any third party without explicit permission in every single instance.
Still, with more than 500 million users. I expect, due to the fact that some suggest the level Facebook interaction is inversely proportional to the intelligence of the user, that quite a few will acquiesce without a true understanding of what they do.
... is that it's an all or nothing situation, If application X does lots of things I like but for some reason demands access to information like that for no apparent reason then I can't say "Yes permit this app but deny it access to that info". I have to either say "Yes, take my personal details even if you don't need it" or "Bugger off".
I was going to make the same statement myself. I don't use any facebook apps for the simple fact they are way over reaching in the functionality.
Take the dating sites that are hooked into facwbook, being a single guy I thought I would give it a try but as soon as I seen it wanted permission to post on my wall, I stopped there. If I could deny wall permission they possibly still could have had my business.
Luckily Application X is likely to be a complete load of monkey kronk so if it asks too much, you're not really missing out by not installing it.
I don't think I've got a single app on FB and that means is my wall's less clogged up with crap. Well that and a consistent "see and app, block an app" approach...
Amazon.com has not only my cell number and home address, but my credit card number, too! Those rat bastards!
Ok, so, maybe I'm missing something here as a non-facebook-user (I only just went to 'facebook.com' a couple of days ago, having decided to put my company on...)... But discussing whether they should be 'allowed' to ask is odd. Obviously plenty of other businesses have that info.
If you're worried about their trustworthiness in dealing with it (vis unannounced changes in policy as above) that's understandable - but seems to me to be an issue independant of the nature of the information itself.
Plenty of companies have my address, phone, credit card # and other confidential data. But I expect those companies to treat my data confidentially, not happy to sell to the highest bidder. Which is not the case of Facebook et al.
And who gives away real addresses on the internet except when buying something you expect to receive by mail, anyway?
I suggest that everyone uses the following address of Facebook themselves on your facebook page, if facebook trawl, peruse or otherwise amalgamate address and numbers for nefarious marketing purposes I hope they reap the benefits themselves, especially if Facebook "inadvertantly expose" your contact address/ Telephone number.
I have even amended the country I currently live in to be a very minor country - why ? because I get less of those scuzzy ad's appearing on the RHS of the screen.
Besides, my real friends know where I live :)
1601 South California Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94304
United States
Tel: +1 650-543-4801
Email : abuse+dt17u8y@fb.com or client-support-en@fb.com
Facebook changed it's email domain to fb.com on Jan 12 2011
We don't get many visitors here on Mars. I'll even through in my birthday, February 30th.
Seriously, Facebook is destroying the meaning of "friend" and most people have no idea of the threat. I have a bunch of pending "friend" requests--but they are NOT my friends, and the only reason I might approve them is because it's too much trouble to explain why I don't want to. For most of these people, I could not really confirm whether or not they are even who they claim to be. A one-page resume could easily cover everything I know some of these people.
As for the threat, imagine that one of these pending friend requests is actually from an impostor even apart from knowing that person only slightly. Having approved that person as a 'friend', they know have access to a group of REAL friends, some of whom go back for years. They could now strike up conversations with any of those people to collect a LARGE amount of information about me. They could even use that information on a secondary level, to create new impostors for other groups. It's almost a shame that the East German secret service has been disbanded. This approach would be SO much more efficient than their extended networks of real informers.
Already a number of my "friends" have synced their mobile phone contact lists (including my name and full contact details) into Facebook. Access to this rich database is now even closer than it was yesterday.
Just how tempting would it be for Facebook to utilise this source of data to fill in gaps for recalcitrants who refuse to provide these details themselves? So far they have at every turn put revenue ahead of privacy. All it will take is a minor expansion in the technical scope of this change (but it would be crossing a major trust boundary).
Paris. I wish I was in her f-list.
Not sure I understand what you're saying here... are you saying that people have your contact details on their mobey's which they've then upoaded to FB? I'm not sure how that would work. Is there a "phonebook" type thingy on FB? like there is for Gmail?
My Mobey, sucks stuff out of FB from MY profile but doesn't put anything back. If it finds a contact on my phone that looks like it might be the same as a FB contact, it'll "join" the 2 and then any FB changes the contact makes is auto sync'd to my phone but my phone does nothing to their FB profile and if a contact on my phone doesn't have an FB contact then there is no interaction between my phone and FB for that contact at all.
When I joined Facebook a couple years ago, one of my first thoughts was, "who the FUCK would put their home address and phone number on a social network?"
I didn't realise the answer would be "millions of people worldwide."
You can't blame Zuckerberg for this one. This is straight up dumb-fuckery.
...when I logged in the other day, asking me if I'd like to share my phone number and address. And then I noticed on the sidebar that it was offering to find more friends for me if it could just have my email address and email account password please? We won't keep hold of it! Honest!
How about no.
I'm not surprised that the less savvy end up giving ever more data to the beast. I am surprised we haven't seen more fallout from that yet.
A Facebook request for 'Basic Information' comprise of?
name, profile picture, gender, networks, user ID, list of friends and any other information i've shared with everyone!
I can see name, profile picture, gender and user ID as being 'Basic Information'
But not: networks, list of friends and any other information I've shared with everyone!
I've aborted a number of things that 'require' that information.
Big Brother has a new name!
Facebook T&C's http://www.facebook.com/terms.php?ref=pf
Basically, threaded thickly between each line of legalese runs the following theme...
...facebook, facebook users and facebook application developers will not under any circumstances:
be sex offenders, be under 13 years of age, provide any erroneous information, be in any way abusive or insulting, make reference to any perceived 'adult' material (including references to drinking!), request information that is unecessary, use harvesting bots, retain information gleened from other users, pass that information to anyone else...
...without the written permission of facebook; and as always, without any right to compensation.
WTF?
my mobile phone number for lost account recovery is what FB claims (misleads) us to believe... no where in the help center does it mention that FB is harvesting phone numbers & addresses to make billions in revenue...liars
i wonder how many users have or will give them the info to stay on FB to play the Zynga games they're addicted to and spend real money on Favor Points...
hey, match made in hell... Zuckerberg+Pinncus=Facebook You Suck!
FB want my number? one. yes, one finger. the middle finger up.