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Facebook Now Shares Phone Number & Address With Third-Party Apps

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Re: Facebook Now Shares Phone Number & Address With Third-Party Apps

#61

Post by rwwmike »

EGreg wrote: post #29

I've been developing Facebook Connect applications for a long time, and I'm wondering - hasn't facebook had this feature already for email addresses? One of the permissions read: "Send me email" (optional: send through a facebook proxy) So now, you can also let the apps know phone number through the graph? I don't find that too big of a step. CAN-SPAM still applies. Perhaps they should set up proxies for the phone nu…

Who owns your online identity is a completely different thing than letting this sort of contact information leak through the carelessness of your friends. Other profile information of yours, if you don't correct FB's settings, can be given to third-parties by way of your friend saying okay.

That is, thankfully your friend can't decide they want to share there contact information with some app and vicariously share yours too.

Big difference.

Re: Facebook Now Shares Phone Number & Address With Third-Party Apps

#62

Post by rwwmike »

code_duck wrote: post #40
beaumartinez wrote: post #19

ReadWriteWeb-sponsered submission? Check the URL, it has a tracking string (for want of a better word) with "hackernews".

If you look at the bio of the submitter, he writes for ReadWriteWeb and, I believe, wrote the article. Nothing wrong with that; people often submit their own work here.

You are correct. I write for ReadWriteWeb, wrote the article and I think that the URL has that code in it because I clicked on the Hacker News button on the article to share it.

:)

Re: Facebook Now Shares Phone Number & Address With Third-Party Apps

#63

Post by MichaelApproved »

jdp23 wrote: post #54
btipling wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They used to provide this option but it actually made the API harder to work with. You could deny or approve one permission at a time and the developer had to handle it (and by handling that really meant always checking for permissions before actions and bugging the user for the permission whenever they tried something that required it). As a developer I prefer the new way, which is also how Android development works…

Interesting, I didn't know that. > Giving line-item veto to a user is a terrible idea. Giving the user choice about whether or not they want to give up their personal information is a great idea. Suppose I don't want the app to have my email and phone number. Without finer-grained control, my only option is to say no to the entire app -- so they lose me as a user.

They'll gain more users by reducing options which make things less confusing than they'll lose because they didn't give fine grain control.

Re: Facebook Now Shares Phone Number & Address With Third-Party Apps

#64

Post by revorad »

jwatzman wrote: post #20
stanleydrew wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Give this app "all" of the information it is requesting or give "nothing." People want more granular control.

People who read HN , myself included, want more granular control, sure. I don't think most of Facebook's users would care or understand about the granular control -- I think a simple yes/no like Facebook has right now is probably the best option for most users.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/05/google-facebook-twitter-tec...

Re: Facebook Now Shares Phone Number & Address With Third-Party Apps

#65

Post by loewenskind »

yason wrote: post #9
ssclafani wrote: post #2

Less sensational headline: Facebook Now Allows You to Share Your Phone Number & Address With Third-Party Apps

The next thing to do would be to wait for them to swap the defaults and make it so that you have to specifically opt-out of the scheme, or have your contact information casually shared with a set of third parties. Then we could scream for privacy and spread instructions on how to disable that using this week's user interface to the privacy settings.

Yes, this is exactly the danger here and something Facebook has done to its users several times already.

Re: Facebook Now Shares Phone Number & Address With Third-Party Apps

#66

Post by loewenskind »

btipling wrote: post #38
jdp23 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has refused to provide that option.

They used to provide this option but it actually made the API harder to work with. You could deny or approve one permission at a time and the developer had to handle it (and by handling that really meant always checking for permissions before actions and bugging the user for the permission whenever they tried something that required it). As a developer I prefer the new way, which is also how Android development works…

Are you serious? A better API would be if it were just a yes or no to send all my information? I couldn't possibly disagree more.

Newflash: I don't give a shit about how hard your job as a programmer is. If you don't like programming take up something else. I care about my security and not having to worry about what effect clicking "OK" is going to have. Plenty of apps ask you things that they don't need to function.

Re: Facebook Now Shares Phone Number & Address With Third-Party Apps

#67

Post by loewenskind »

jwatzman wrote: post #57
stanleydrew wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a Facebook account so I may not be the best person to judge, but it seems like whether "most of Facebook's users would care or understand about the granular control" might not be the best basis for making a decision. In fact, I will go ahead and say that I disagree strongly that Facebook should base privacy control decisions on what most users want. Most users of any service or product won't fully unders…

Unfortunately it doesn't work that way -- users are foolish and will shoot themselves in the foot quite often, all while blaming you. If there were an option to, for example, disallow sharing of X on app Y, users would click it without understanding why. Then, months later, since X isn't shared, feature Z of app Y doesn't work. But the user doesn't understand how this works (messaging in the app might make it better,…

iPhone apps would apparently have this problem. Simple solution? If the app can't do some function because of a user setting it pops up an alert with a button pointing to the place to change the setting.... pretty simple.

Re: Facebook Now Shares Phone Number & Address With Third-Party Apps

#69

Post by heresy »

jwatzman wrote: post #20
stanleydrew wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Give this app "all" of the information it is requesting or give "nothing." People want more granular control.

People who read HN , myself included, want more granular control, sure. I don't think most of Facebook's users would care or understand about the granular control -- I think a simple yes/no like Facebook has right now is probably the best option for most users.

If you explain in terms of what it actually means, a large subset of people will and do care. "Huh? Farmville wants my phone number? What the heck for?"
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