[LINK] Facebook backdown -- for now
Jan Whitaker
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
Wed Jan 19 10:37:47 AEDT 2011
"Facebook halts plan to share contact information with app developers
January 19, 2011 - 8:11AM
Facebook, in its latest privacy flap, has delayed a plan to share
home addresses and mobile phone numbers of its members with outside
developers of applications.
Facebook announced on its developer blog last week that it would
begin granting developers access to home addresses and mobile numbers
but the social network followed up with another post this week saying
the move had been put on hold.
"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 Douglas Purdy, director of developer relations at Facebook.
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"We agree, and we are making changes to help ensure you only share
this information when you intend to do so," Purdy said.
"We'll be working to launch these updates as soon as possible, and
will be temporarily disabling this feature until those changes are
ready," he said.
"We look forward to re-enabling this improved feature in the next few weeks."
The change announced last week would have allowed Facebook members to
share their home address and mobile number with external websites and
third-party developers of applications.
A Facebook user would have had to explicitly choose to share the data
before it could be accessed by a application or website and home
addresses and mobile numbers of friends could not be shared.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at computer security firm
Sophos, was among those expressing concern about Facebook's initial move.
"I realise that Facebook users will only have their personal
information accessed if they 'allow' the app to do so, but there are
just too many attacks happening on a daily basis which trick users
into doing precisely this," Cluley said in a blog post.
"Now, shady app developers will find it easier than ever before to
gather even more personal information from users," he said. "You can
imagine, for instance, that bad guys could set up a rogue app that
collects mobile phone numbers.
"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," Cluley said.
Facebook is the world's most popular social network with nearly 600
million users but it has been dogged by complaints about privacy protection."
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/facebook-halts-plan-to-share-contact-information-with-app-developers-20110119-19vmm.html
http://snipurl.com/1vh7x2
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or
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~Madeline L'Engle, writer
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