Facebook is giving developers access to addresses and mobile numbers but users have to allow it for each App they install
As Huffington Post reported, Facebook on Friday announced on its developers blog that it is making users addresses and mobile phone number available to developers “as part of the User Graph object.”
Because this is sensitive information, Facebook said, “permissions must be explicitly granted to your application by the user via our standard permissions dialogs.”
What that means is that users will see a dialog box every time they install a new application that will ask them to “allow” that app to have access to their basic information and contact information. That’s great but a lot of people never bother reading those notices and are likely to just click “Allow” without thinking about what they are doing. It’s not that people are stupid, we’re just busy, a bit overwhelmed and not always paying attention to all of those boxes the pop-up when we install applications.
Easy to Delete Contact Information
The good news is that if you don’t have this information on your Facebook profile, it can’t be passed on to developers or anyone else and to make it easy to delete that information, I’ve outlined some simple steps on my CNET blog.
For more detailed information on how to control Facebook privacy settings for kids as well as adults, please take a look at A Parents Guide to Facebook which I co-wrote with my ConnectSafely.org co-director, Anne Collier.
Disclosure: Larry Magid is co-director of ConnectSafely.org which receives financial support from Facebook. He is also founder of SafeKids.com and LarrysWorld.com.
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