Facebook Opens Up Home Addresses and Phone Numbers 459
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."
This is a seriously bad idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
why stop at addresses and phone numbers? (Score:4, Insightful)
How about you remove all of your posts, pictures and delete your account immediately?
If this doesn't wake people up, absolutely nothing will.
Never had them there in the first place (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Another option (Score:5, Insightful)
And you trust FB to honor your choice of options?
Closing the barn door too late (Score:4, Insightful)
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..
Who didn't see this one coming? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Forest Gump was a wise man ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
How far do you go? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
An even better option... (Score:5, Insightful)
...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.
Re:Another option (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:why stop at addresses and phone numbers? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why stop there? Why leave your house in the first place? If you go outside, you're just -asking- for your organs to get sold on the black market. And having a computer is just begging someone to steal your identity and infect you with computer viruses.
Alright, that's a hyperbole, but my point is that a lot of people actually like facebook. Deleting information like your home address and phone number is an easy step, and then they'll still be able to use it.
Re:why stop at addresses and phone numbers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the moderator considered it funny that someone thinks if he removes all his data from Facebook, it is no longer stored there?
Re:Who didn't see this one coming? (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect that even poisoning the database with garbage data won't stop the demand for said data because the marketing people who buy it are far to lazy to actually CHECK said data; and so long as a reasonable percentage of the data is legitimate and they make their numbers, who cares? The cost of buying the data is insignificant when compared to other costs.
Sad but true.
Re:why stop at addresses and phone numbers? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about you remove all of your posts, pictures and delete your account immediately?.
You're assuming that closing your account actually deletes all your information and Facebook no longer sells it to advertisers. This is not necessarily a valid assumption.
Re:Duh? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:An even better option... (Score:3, Insightful)
...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.
Actually, the best solution is to probably replace all your personal information in your account with fake information. Maybe then, at least, Facebook will think you moved. Maybe you will get even luckier and they will lose your old data in a backup failure. If you just delete your account, I am sure they know you are on to them and try to sell your info to the highest bidder!
Re:Message from Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Mark,
Fuck you.
I wonder if this is a tactic to see just how much bullshit people will put up with.
Re:An even better option... (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd be a complete nutjob to be using Facebook.
You'd be a "nutjob" to trust any vital information to Facebook. But I submit to you that there are millions of highly educated and/or computer savvy facebook users. Classifying them all as "nutjobs" is silly. I have a facebook account. I don't post anything on my profile or anywhere else that I consider to be important. I don't post pictures of my children on Facebook (and nor does my wife).
Nice! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Message from Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Strike back and delete your account (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:An even better option... (Score:5, Insightful)
So you post nothing of importance, only useless shit? I guess that is a useful tactic to scare other users off facebook.
I suspect that's flamebait but I'll bite. I don't post anything of importance from a security standpoint. I might post that I had fun at someone's event - I don't post about it ni avance. I might post that I'm feeling sick or tired, I don't post my doctor's report. I might post that a gadget I own is frustrating me but I don't post an inventory of what I own. I might say my child's done something amusing, but I don't post their whereabouts. I might post that something is going on in the area I live in, but I don't post street address or GPS co-ordinates or phone numbers.
In other words I'm careful. If you don't care about what my frustrations are, what amusing things my kids did etc. sure you'll consider it "useless shit". That is BY DESIGN.
Re:Message from Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Message from Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup, that spelling is about the level of quality you'll find on Facebook. ;)
Re:Message from Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Message from Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)
...I could of kept going...
As a grammar Nazi you are an amateur. It's "could have" or perhaps "could've", not "could of".