back to article Facebook to share home addresses, phone numbers

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 …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "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.

  2. Steve Evans

    That's fine by me

    Home address and mobile number are two things I already don't share with facebook!

    1. Ammaross Danan
      Coat

      Exactly!

      Just another bit of info to continue falsifying. Other people do falsify that stuff too, right?

      Carry on, nothing to see here...

  3. Matt Brigden
    FAIL

    And how long

    before a developer then realises it can make more money by also selling the numbers and addresses to telemarketers ?

  4. adnim

    Why

    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.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    The problem with the FB permissions dialogue...

    ... 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".

    1. Robert Heffernan
      Big Brother

      Exactly

      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.

    2. Bristol Dave
      Thumb Up

      Exactly what I was going to post too

      Why can't you have a list of checkboxes where you can allow and deny what the app wants?

    3. Code Monkey
      Thumb Up

      Application X

      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...

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    uh oh...

    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.

    1. Renato
      Thumb Down

      Re: uh oh...

      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?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    The Law of FaceBook

    More evil by the day, each and every day.

    Which will break first? Moore's Law, or The Law of FaceBook?

    1. Elmer Phud

      Law of Facebook?

      It's only if people are mug enough to put details in thier profile - real details that is -- and then are thick enough to share them. Facebook merely offers an opportunity for idiots to shine.

      1. Shanghai Tom

        Address/Phone/Email to use on your "personal page"

        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

      2. Nigel Brown

        I'm disinclined to aquiesce to your request

        And there are plenty of shiney happy people out there in FB land.

        Personally, the only real info Facebook has on me is my name, everything else is missing or made up.

  8. Shannon Jacobs
    Big Brother

    Glad to share my address!

    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.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      I don't need to imagine..

      "..imagine that one of these pending friend requests is actually from an impostor.."

      Actually the trick for an imposter is to "friend" the target's friends first. Then the target will often approach the imposter as a "friend" if they are dumb enough.

  9. JaitcH
    FAIL

    The big question is ...

    just how many FB users know how to locate their control panel AND when they do find it, do they know how to use the options.

    Certain ages should be banned from being able to share, too.

  10. Suburban Inmate
    Stop

    Email and Mobe No.

    Were shared to my "friends"* for a few days until I realised what was going on. Fail most is my advice, better cruel to be kind.

    *People I upon which I do not currently wish harm. Yet.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    And what about contact lists?

    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.

    1. IsJustabloke
      Badgers

      I refuse to enoble a simple forum post!

      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.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Megaphone

    Fail writ large

    People! (FB users et al)

    Your personal details are highly valuable.

    Never, ever *give* them away.

    1. HFoster

      Word.

      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.

  13. David Hicks

    I got some sort of facebook popup/intermediate page...

    ...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.

    1. lglethal Silver badge
      Go

      Unfortunately...

      Unfortunately i think the most pertinent part of what you wrote was the very last word - Yet...

  14. beli bouton
    WTF?

    When will people realize

    Facebook is NOT your friend!

    1. John Riddoch

      The computer is your friend...

      Trust the computer...

  15. Nick 6
    Big Brother

    Soylent Green

    In Facebook, you are not the customer, you are the product. You are milked for data which are sold to the refiners and buyers.

    The benefits the cow obtains from the farmer are marginal.

  16. Lionel Baden

    Hey Facebook

    Want my mother maiden name too ????

    1. THUFIR HAWAT
      Unhappy

      mothers maiden name

      All they need is to access your mothers FB page, and they have it without even asking!

  17. Stevie

    Bah!

    Dear me, are people really still falling for the line that anything stored on a publicly accessible server is "private information"?

    I'm in the wrong business. Clearly the con game is the way to go.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Basic Information comprise of?

    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!

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    move along quietly now... nothing to see here

    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.

  20. HAHAHA...no
    WTF?

    FB locator chip already inserted in the scruff of my neck...and yours?

    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.

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