Are you safe on Facebook ?
Facebook has waded into yet another privacy quagmire — this time, over plans to share member street addresses and phone numbers with third-party apps and Web sites. Users freaked, and now Facebook says it will suspend the feature pending “improvements” to the permissions process.
The flap began last Friday, after Facebook posted an entry on its developer blog detailing the new feature, which would allow third-party Facebook apps and Web sites to access the phone numbers and actual street addresses of users who’d entered the information into their profiles.
The idea behind the feature was to “streamine” the checkout process for online commerce by automatically filling in shipping and billing addresses before completing a purchase — not the worst idea in the world — as well as allow merchants to send out mobile alerts for, say, specials or discount offers.
But while the new sharing feature was designed as an opt-in — meaning that Facebook users had to explicitly grant their permission before apps and Web sites could see their info — many complained that the standard, single “request for permission” dialog box failed to emphasize that members were about to give third-party app developers and advertisers access to their home addresses and phone numbers.
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