Third-party Facebook apps soon to access addresses, phone numbers

Facebook will soon be re-instituting a policy that allows third party developers and websites - many of them fronts for marketers - to access users’ home addresses and cellphone numbers

The policy was released in January on Facebook’s Developer Blog but was disabled three days later due to what vice president of global public policy Marne Levine called “some degree of concern among users”. 

This concern included a letter from two United States congressman which asked, among other questions, whether Facebook had considered the risks to children and teenagers, and whether any personal information had been given out before the cancellation.

In a response to this letter Mr Levine pointed out that applications had to make use of the standard permissions screen to ask for personal and contact information.

He said users who had allowed third party access this way would have indeed handed over their personal and contact information before the service was cancelled.

Mr Levine went on to state that Facebook considered risks to minors in all its new product features and that “we are actively considering whether to enable applications to request contact information from minors at all”. He went on to say that minors under 13 were prohibited from using Facebook.

Facebook intends to re-institute the policy, Mr Levine said, and a Facebook blog update on January 18 said they were looking forward to re-enabling the improved feature in the "next few weeks".  This improvement was mentioned in Mr Levine's letter, where he said the company are looking at methods to “enhance user control” in the permissions screen part of the application process.  

“We are evaluating whether and how we can increase the visibility of applications’ requests for permission to access user information. We are also considering whether additional user education would be helpful.”

Given short Shroff
Meanwhile the New Zealand privacy commissioner Marie Shroff said it was important for Facebook users to be in the driving seat, be told basic facts, and have the chance to easily opt out if they wanted to. 

“Having the full picture is extra important for younger users. In our most recent public opinion survey of privacy, 88% of respondents were concerned about the information that children and young people put on the internet about themselves.”