Facebook is facing further controversy after allowing application developers to access users’ home addresses and mobile phone numbers as a matter of course.
The move, announced by the social network over the weekend, led online security experts to warn Facebook’s half a billion users to remove phone numbers and addresses from the network.
When people use one of Facebook’s third-party applications, such as a popular games Farmville and Mafia Wars, the pop-up window asks for access to “contact information” including address and mobile phone number.
Users can simply select the “Don’t allow” button, denying app developers the ability to access personal data. However, people often do not read what they are agreeing to, and by agreeing could be exposed to rogue applications using the information to send spam or sells on the data to cold-calling companies.
Facebook’s developer guidelines state that application makers can only ask for information they actually need in an effort to ensure unscrupulous people don’t simply mine as much personal data as they can to sell to advertisers or, worse, use in identify fraud.
However, in October last year the Wall Street Journal exposed a number of Facebook app developers who were blatantly breaking the guidelines and feeding data to advertisers.
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People really only have themselves to blame if they give this information to websites and then don’t read what they are agreeing to.
Speaking personally I only give enough information to websites such as Facebook / LinkedIn etc to allow me to access the site and certainly on Facebook the permissions are screwed down tight so that only friends can see what little information I provide.