This past Friday night, Facebook pushed out a new update to the service which allows any developer to gain access to your contact info, including home address and cell phone number. They announced this after business hours, most likely so the vast majority of tech-savvy media outlets were home for the weekend.
Facebook pulls a fast one on users: gives away even more of your private information
I never entered my home address or phone number in my Facebook profile, but if you did, I would recommend you delete the info now before developers intent on spamming your phone and home mail box get a hold of it.
In Facebook’s defense, they DO ask you when an app requests this info. But Facebook also knows darn well that the average user isn’t going to understand what it means or how to deal with it. The fact that they announced this on their developer blog late on a Friday night just goes to show you that they know it’s sneaky and you probably wouldn’t agree to it if they put it right on your profile page as an announcement.
The intent of this is feature, I’m sure, is to allow you to log-in to other sites using your Facebook account and when you purchase something, you won’t have to enter that private information manually. But I don’t buy it. Not only does every browser on the market already have a basic auto-fill function, but there are numerous extensions and plugins that also accomplish this – such as 1Password.
I have never gotten spam on my cell or at my home address. Go smoke some more tweak and come up with something more clever pal