Facebook Now Shares Phone Number & Address With Third-Party Apps • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by estel » Sun, Jan 16, 2011, 10:22 PM UTC

andysinclair wrote: post #26

But how many people have added their full address and phone number to their Facebook profiles anyway? I would bet that the majority of people have their city/town set and not their full address and won't have specified their phone number at all. However, this really could be quite useful if used legitimately, i.e. Facebook commerce, having shipping address available; location aware apps etc.

Anecdotally, something like 30% of my friends list (not particularly tech-savvy skewed) probably share their phone numbers.

It's also one of the most useful features of the whole site, if I'm out somewhere and realise I suddenly need to call someone whose number I can grab from Facebook.

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

#32

Post by stanleydrew » Sun, Jan 16, 2011, 10:25 PM UTC

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.

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 understand every single configuration option available to them. That doesn't mean we should give up on allowing configuration. And using the interface to subtly educate and inform users about their options is a worthy goal. But that doesn't seem to be in Facebook's immediate best interests.

Android also has a similar dialog when downloading/installing new applications that provides "all-or-nothing" control just like this Facebook dialog. I think it's bad there as well.

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

#33

Post by nhangen » Sun, Jan 16, 2011, 10:30 PM UTC

yellowbkpk wrote: post #4

ssclafani wrote: post #2

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

Right, but the point RWW was trying to make is that the dialog doesn't exactly scream "we're sharing your phone number!" It looks very similar to any other dialog 90% of the Internet might click through without so much as a glance.

Exactly, and what I really don't like about this is not that they are doing it, but they won't share it with their users unless the tech world makes a big deal out of it, which they will. So they announce it on the dev blog, but not the public blog, which I think is poor form at a minimum.

I looked through my profile info and I didn't see a way to hide my phone or address from applications, which means that I have to choose to not post them on Facebook, or provide access any time I want to use an app that requests them.

Obviously, this is much more useful to developers than it is users.

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

#34

Post by nhangen » Sun, Jan 16, 2011, 10:33 PM UTC

motters wrote: post #10

I seem to remember that not so long ago it was standard advice not to give out your address or phone number to people you don't know on the internet.

With privacy settings set properly, you aren't doing that at all. You're sharing your address and phone # with your friends. From what I can gather, this bypasses those settings.

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

#35

Post by nhangen » Sun, Jan 16, 2011, 10:34 PM UTC

ChipsAndSalsa wrote: post #30

The idea of allowing users to control what individual permissions they have is good in theory, very hard in practice. It faces two main challenges that I can think of: 1) There are UI issues that have been raised elsewhere in this thread - mainly, that users get confused when shown a set of complex options. Having watched usability studies where users are given a lot of relatively complex options, I'd suspect that a…

Just because it is difficult in practice does not make it any less important. That sounds like a Facebook problem more than a user problem.

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

#36

Post by alanh » Sun, Jan 16, 2011, 10:50 PM UTC

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.

Wow, what a cop-out.

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

#37

Post by nhangen » Sun, Jan 16, 2011, 10:59 PM UTC

ssclafani wrote: post #2

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

If this is true, then why was it announced to developers and not users?

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

#38

Post by btipling » Sun, Jan 16, 2011, 11:55 PM UTC

jdp23 wrote: post #11

beoba wrote: post #5

Where's the option to choose which items get sent? Looks like all or nothing.

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. Giving line-item veto to a user is a terrible idea. If they don't like the permissions, don't use the app. It's good for Facebook's api too because now people aren't constantly checking which permissions are available before they do something, probably reducing the stress on the API quite a bit.

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

#39

Post by ghkyudfe » Mon, Jan 17, 2011, 12:06 AM UTC

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

#40

Post by code_duck » Mon, Jan 17, 2011, 12:40 AM UTC

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.