It seems Facebook are at last taking privacy concerns seriously. There was panic amongst social-networkers that the website was becoming too intrusive and that privacy was at risk after a controversial new feature emerged that allowed third-party features such as FarmVille to gain access to your home address and mobile telephone number.
After only three days Facebook has now “temporarily disabled" the feature but it remains to be seen what permanent action will be taken by Mark and his chums.
Of course individual users had to click to grant permission before developers could get hold of the details but the concern was that many users just blindly click accept not acknowledging the fact that they are giving private information away; leading security firms such as Sophos to claim that the feature might be used by rogue applications.
Facebook said the benefits of the feature included the ability to “easily share your address and mobile phone with a shopping site to streamline the checkout process, or sign up for up-to-the-minute alerts on special deals directly to your mobile phone.”
But after a public outcry Facebook changed their tune.
“We got some useful feedback that we could make people more clearly aware of when they are granting access to this data. We agree, and we are making changes to help ensure you only share this information when you intend to do so."
“We'll be working to launch these updates as soon as possible, and will be temporarily disabling this feature until those changes are ready. We look forward to re-enabling this improved feature in the next few weeks.”
It's a step in the right direction for Facebook to be making users more aware of what they are handing over but in the bigger picture it still seems Facebook is something to be wary of when it comes to privacy.
I for one am becoming more and more uncomfortable with this whole social-networking trend.
Source: The Register