Tags
Address (geography), Facebook, Filesystem permissions, Mobile phone, Personally identifiable information, Social networks, Sophos, Telephone number
Facebook made yet another change to its privacy policy, enabling third-party application developers to access your street address and cell phone number. This information was made public Friday night on the Facebook Developer Blog.
The good news is that this is an opt-in feature, but there’s a catch. Each time you install a Facebook app you’re asked whether to allow access to your “basic information” and your “current address and mobile phone number,” and if you click Allow, the information can be provided. Many people routinely do click Allow without necessarily reading the request for permission or thinking about the implications. The safest way to make sure your address and phone number aren’t passed on to developers is to not provide it all, and if it is there in your Facebook profile, to remove it. I especially recommend that parents talk with their teens about removing this information from their profiles.
User Comments
Facebooks’s well over 500 million subscribers have made their site fabulously successful. They have no real competition having driven most out through their successes. Further, Facebook comes across as arrogant and high-handed with their subscribers, needlessly exposing all of us to online dangers and privacy concerns, all in the interest of evermore profit for themselves.
I have decided I do not wish to be a part of that, and that’s why?I deactivated my Facebook account as of today.
Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-19518_3-20028708-238.html#ixzz1BPUJEfOf
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