You are responsible for sharing your phone number when you provide it to Facebook. Facebook is doing what it feels like with it. As usual.
Are people really still surprised when they find out that information they share with some free online web site is going to be used in ways that they didn't anticipate?
I agree with that statement, but many times, people might not realize that they are sharing their phone number or some other piece of personal information with the world. I only recently signed up to develop Facebook Applications, and they required me to verify my account by giving them my mobile number so they could text me a code. In doing so, this tied my cell phone number to my account and broadcast it to the world until I checked to make sure it was not doing so a day later.
I created a dumby facebook account to get ahold of some friends who dont use email. After about a week facebook gave me an ultimatum, give them my phone number or upload a color picture of my drivers license. I decided to say good bye to facebook.
What you did is expressly against the terms of use of Facebook. It's for real people, real businesses, etc.. They were just trying to verify you're a real person, possibly your account was reported by someone as being fake.
Not to be a total dick, but I hope that those phone numbers are disconnected because the smart ass who made the article failed on blurring out the numbers correctly...
A friend pointed this out to me this morning. When I opted out here: http://www.facebook.com/contact_importer/remove_uploads.php... it said for the iphone app: "Note: Before you click Remove, you need to make sure syncing is switched off." Though, it was already switched off. Ah, good times, good times...
There's a lot going on here. Facebook reports to be a social networking site. As such, one might expect to exchange contact info with someone they meet on the site. Of course, this means Facebook actually has to store it. That's fine.
The problem is that Facebook has insecure defaults. It is reasonable for a person to assume that contact information would only be visible to their "friends" (whether or not they are accepting random people as friends is another issue). Facebook should make it painfully clear that this isn't the case, and give its users more robust tools to control their data.
Of course, even if this does happen (which it won't, because it is in Facebook's every interest to keep as much of your info public as they can), some users will still leave their contact info public and wonder why they get calls from strangers...
Remember when you learned how to write checks in the third grade? I think it is time to prepare kids for controlling their online identity formally...
I don't see anyone in my contacts list who I'm not friended with and who isn't already sharing their number in their profile in a way I can see it. Maybe he just hit a bug in the list?
This was/is a widely reported "bug" (since early last year) and is actually the main problem. If I have you in my phone's address book, and you are not on Facebook, how is it I can give permission for your phone number to be uploaded to their servers?
This was changed in updates to the app, however the fallout continues to rain down.
[+] [-] grannyg00se|14 years ago|reply
Are people really still surprised when they find out that information they share with some free online web site is going to be used in ways that they didn't anticipate?
[+] [-] uxp|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jonknee|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wildmXranat|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darklajid|14 years ago|reply
Showing a screenshot with lots of phone numbers that are less distorted than your average captcha image seems just as bad though..
[+] [-] hussong|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jivejones|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pak|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbuizert|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tlrobinson|14 years ago|reply
But my privacy settings are very restrictive, and I only friend people I've met.
[+] [-] anymoonus|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrspeaker|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gaius|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dfxm12|14 years ago|reply
The problem is that Facebook has insecure defaults. It is reasonable for a person to assume that contact information would only be visible to their "friends" (whether or not they are accepting random people as friends is another issue). Facebook should make it painfully clear that this isn't the case, and give its users more robust tools to control their data.
Of course, even if this does happen (which it won't, because it is in Facebook's every interest to keep as much of your info public as they can), some users will still leave their contact info public and wonder why they get calls from strangers...
Remember when you learned how to write checks in the third grade? I think it is time to prepare kids for controlling their online identity formally...
[+] [-] dbingham|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] polynomial|14 years ago|reply
This was changed in updates to the app, however the fallout continues to rain down.
[+] [-] Jun8|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fedorabbit|14 years ago|reply