Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

news.cnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 194 posts

Re: Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

#51

Post by bira »

gee_totes wrote: post #37
ozataman wrote: post #4

Well, this is my gripe with their "go fast and break things" mantra. It works as long as you have such a highly desirable product that your users just don't care if you're doing everything right. (Or maybe you're in a non-mission-critical business, or better yet, your customers are a bunch of kids!) I'm all for going fast and sincerely believe in "A sense of urgency", but Facebook is really lucky they're not serving…

Facebook is serving shareholders now. I'm hoping there are some serious repercussions internally at FB for this, because as a shareholder, I'm pissed they messed this up because the user base is upset and will continue to stop trusting Facebook. How's the stock supposed to get back to 38 now?

Did you buy at 38?

Re: Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

#52

Post by californian »

kmm wrote: post #41
nphase wrote: post #29

I just deleted the Facebook app from my iPhone. I have no idea if it altered any of my contacts, but this certainly does scare me enough to warrant deletion.

I wish I could do that. I wonder if Facebook paid HTC a lot of money to make the Facebook app un-uninstallable.

If you go to Settings >> Accounts & Sync, can you at least uncheck "Sync Contacts" for Facebook?

Re: Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

#53

Post by crazygringo »

The more important question is, what are Apple and Google doing allowing apps write access to a user's address book??

I can't believe anyone at Facebook was dumb enough to think this was a good idea. But at the same time, I can't believe some "rogue engineer" did this by accident. I'm curious to see what Facebook says about it.

Re: Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

#54

Post by vijayr »

I really don't understand this - FB has repeatedly shown they don't give a shit about users' privacy etc. They also don't care about breaking stuff. This is not the first time it is happening, and won't be the last. So, Why are people putting their work email ids on their FB account???

Re: Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

#55

Post by jarofgreen »

californian wrote: post #52
kmm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could do that. I wonder if Facebook paid HTC a lot of money to make the Facebook app un-uninstallable.

If you go to Settings >> Accounts & Sync, can you at least uncheck "Sync Contacts" for Facebook?

Or just remove your Facebook login credentials entirely, thus rendering the app unable to do anything? (I don't have that exact model but I think this should work, no?)

Re: Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

#56

Post by jarofgreen »

sp332 wrote: post #44
wikkiwa wrote: post #5

Is it not illegal to intercept private communications without the parties' consent? Seems like this opens them up to a massive lawsuit...

It's not an intercept since obviously mail servers have to be able to receive email.

I fail to see what that technical detail matters. IANAL but the practical effect of this move is to intercept private communications they didn't see before without explicit permission from the user. I'd love to see a lawyer have a good go at this one.

Re: Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

#57

Post by high5ths »

falling wrote: post #45
jpeterson wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference here is that everything they've done before now has been more or less bounded by my own actions. If they screw my privacy, it's my own damned fault for posting sensitive stuff to their site. Hell, even if they track me around the web, I should've been more careful about blocking their cookies. But this is another ballgame. What they've done here is effectively hijack a completely unrelated and…

I don't mean to defend them because this move is stupid, but to help you get this back in control: you can go you your about page and set the @facebook email to be hidden. I had done this in the past and they didn't touch it.

No, that's the problem here: I had definitely hidden my @facebook email address (setting it to be visible to only me) when it was first created. After a number of people posted this story, I found that the email address was suddenly the only one showing. That's what is so nefarious about this. I had to go and reselect the options I had already chosen, and the only reason I noticed it was because of the press. Really slimy.

Re: Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

#58

Post by chernevik »

kmfrk wrote: post #39
raganwald wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get free unlimited photo storage, free groups, events, messaging, status updates, and more. All your friends are on it and using it. You use it to keep in touch with people around the block and around the globe in real time. All we ask is that your private communications never again leave this application. Perhaps you think you’re being treated unfairly?

Facebook will fix this embarrassing cock-up as if it had never happened - as always. I find your lack of faith disturbing.

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1998-12-02/

Re: Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

#59

Post by jfoutz »

wikkiwa wrote: post #5

Is it not illegal to intercept private communications without the parties' consent? Seems like this opens them up to a massive lawsuit...

I think you'd have to show they accepted the email, then chose not to deliver it to the user.

I think this is just incompetence. hopefully, it's coupled with a little incontinence.

Re: Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

#60

Post by viraptor »

wetherbeei wrote: post #36
raganwald wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get free unlimited photo storage, free groups, events, messaging, status updates, and more. All your friends are on it and using it. You use it to keep in touch with people around the block and around the globe in real time. All we ask is that your private communications never again leave this application. Perhaps you think you’re being treated unfairly?

There's a difference between complaining about features within Facebook (timeline, etc) and changes Facebook tries to make outside of it's app. Changing your personal contact details is way outside.

Not sure how the facebook app integrates with the contact list, but isn't it only a projection of information that facebook servers publish? I.e. it's not "your personal contact details", but rather an entry that you accepted as being presented by facebook?

It would be disturbing if they changed an existing entry that you created yourself, but if it's only an entry bound to an external (facebook) account, I'm not sure it's that bad. Which one is it then?

Post reply on HN