Facebook Amends Rules For Access To Phone, Address

These guys just don’t get it.

Demonstrating yet again that it doesn't really understand privacy concerns, Facebook on Friday told developers that their Facebook apps could now ask permission for access to users' home addresses and mobile phone numbers.

• Folks, please REFUSE any such access!

The company made this information available to developers through the user object in its Graph API and reminded developers that use of Facebook data is governed by the company's Platform Policies.

In theory, there's no privacy problem because users must grant permission to any Facebook app requesting this information and because every app is assumed to be using Facebook data appropriately.

• I somehow doubt that. “Supposed to” doesn’t quite hack it (pun intended).

But that's not how users saw the situation. Comments posted to Facebook's developer blog about the decision were overwhelmingly negative.

"From both the developer and user perspective, I find this a bit disturbing," wrote Facebook user David C. Dean in a comment. "To preface this, I think it's fair to say that the horribly convoluted privacy settings within Facebook are foreign territory to most users. They just want to use Facebook for the features it offers on the surface, and I sincerely doubt any of this will change in the near future."

Dean said that as a developer, it would be preferable to solicit address and phone number information directly, rather than relying on the fact that Facebook users are trained to click when presented with a Facebook permissions dialog box.

While the majority of those commenting said that users should be protected from their ignorance about privacy concerns, a few people said that if users consent to the release of their information, that's their problem.

Faced with overwhelmingly negative feedback, Facebook backpedaled, a bit.

• But not very much!

It still sees value in providing developers with access to addresses and phone numbers, which after all are useful for shipping goods ordered online. But the company plans to revise its request process to make sure that even the most click-happy user understands what he or she is agreeing to when presented with a request for address and phone data.

"Over the weekend, we got some useful feedback that we could make people more clearly aware of when they are granting access to this data," said Facebook's director of developer relations Douglas Purdy in a blog post. "We agree, and we are making changes to help ensure you only share this information when you intend to do so."

The company said it will disable address and phone number access until the revised notification process is put in place.

• Might be just the moment to leave facebook.

Whether these changes assuage concerns remains to be seen.

Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley claims that Facebook's decision will make using the social networking service more dangerous. Facebook, he argues, is plagued by rogue applications that spam users' walls with unwanted comments and drive users to participate in survey scams.

"The ability to access users' home addresses will also open up more opportunities for identity theft, combined with the other data that can already be extracted from Facebook users' profiles," he wrote in a blog post.

Source:  http://tinyurl.com/6g3sfee