UPDATE 4:04 PM 18/01/2011: Facebook has put on hold the controversial feature for a few weeks. Read about the feature below.
On Friday, Facebook announced a very controversial change to its privacy policy, enabling third-party application developers to access your street address and cell phone number.
But like always, Facebook has made this feature opt-in, in such a way that, a user will be providing his/her street address and phone number 1 out of every ten times of allowing third party apps to access his/her profile information. If the user is in a habit of clicking the "allow" button without giving much attention to the page, then he/she will be proliferating the address & number more. A treat for marketers, sieving the content at the app owner's end.
What the cunningly modeled 'opt-in' feature does is-- 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. That's why the feature is not that innocent looking as Facebook wants us to think it to be.
What is the solution to this Breach Of Trust:
It'll be futile to say that one should be paying more attention to the 'allow' page; as it's hard to be attentive all the time. The best way is to -- Remove the Address and the Phone number from the profile altogether. If the info is not there on the first place, how will you mistakingly get it passed on to developers
This will also act as a reminder for Facebook(as Address and phone number are precious for any business, including Facebook; or marketers), that it's bad to launch features with "there's a catch" situation.
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Home » Facebook » How to stop Facebook from passing on your contact and phone number to third party Apps
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