Facebook working overtime to publicize your home address & #mobile number.
Posted: January 17th, 2011 | Author: Erica | Filed under: Social Media Platforms | Tags: Facebook, privacy | Comments OffUpdate: Facebook received some “feedback” over the weekend, and changes are afoot. All I see is PR—they don’t say it won’t be happening, just that people need to be made “more clearly aware” that they’re sharing this data. @JulesPolonetsky—Co-chair and Director of the Future of Privacy Forum, former Chief Privacy Officer at AOL & a great guy to follow if you’re watching the privacy issue—says to hang on.
When you start using a Facebook app, like games and quizzes, you typically click some sort of “allow” that lets the app access your personal information. Facebook will now include your home address & mobile number in the information handed over to the developers of these applications. Your friend’s numbers & addresses won’t be included.
Some are questioning the Friday evening timing of this announcement, and some are encouraging people to remove this data from their profiles before bad things happen to it.
Facebook, on the other hand, is coming up with ever-easier one-click methods of squeezing more specific location & personal data from users. I spotted this “fun” quizvertising a day or 2 before I heard about the change in app permissions.
I underestimated it as merely pesterous, hamfisted data-mining before I understood just why they wanted to know.
Taken together it sounds like Facebook really wants to offer advertisers this data. Crank the dial on the privacy metre from “annoying” to “ominous”. Your social norms have been warned.
