UPDATE: Facebook's NOT Sharing Your Phone Number and Address With Third-Party Apps

UPDATE: Facebook’s suspended the sharing of addresses and phone numbers for a little while. Douglas Purdy, director of development relations said, ““Over the weekend, 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.” In other words, Facebook’s waiting for all its users to know about the data sharing and its implications before enabling the feature again. 

Facebook is now allowing third-party apps access to your phone number and address, they mentioned on their developers’ blog. They said they will now be making this information accessible as part of the User Graph project. What this means is third party applications like ‘Farmville’ and ‘Stalker’ will now be able to access your address and phone number. The way around this, don’t use the app. Or don’t put your phone number and address up if you do use the app.

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The screen which requests permission for address and phone number

Facebook says that because this is sensitive information to give out, users agree to give permission to the apps to access their phone number and address when they first add the application. However, users are most likely going to miss the words phone number and address in their scurry to get the applications.

Thankfully, only you have control of your contact information being shared via Facebook. Your friends’ careless sharing actions will not release your contact information out to these app developers.

We’re expecting a big hoo-ha about this but what it comes down to is simple. Don’t put any information up on Facebook you’re not even in the slightest bit comfortable getting around. If Facebook apps are the only way you entertain yourself (I mean, come on!), but you don’t want the makers of these applications to have your information (consider that you’re also using these applications for free and developers are businessmen too), just don’t put sensitive information up on your profile.