Social Networking: more personal data available in Facebook profiles

This is what Facebook said in its developer section this weekend "We are now making a user’s address and mobile phone number accessible as part of the User Graph object. Because this is sensitive information, we have created the new user_address and user_mobile_phone permissions. These permissions must be explicitly granted to your application by the user via our standard permissions dialogs. (sic)"

When a user signs up to an application, a box opens - it has "allow" and "don't allow" options. But the options are disturbingly imprecise.

"Allow" grants access to two classes of information and, on the face of the graphic provided by Facebook at http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/446, it's an all or nothing "allow." The first group is "name, profile picture, gender, networks, user ID, list of friends and any other information I've shared with anyone." The second is "current address and mobile phone number."

Facebook say that if it's not allowed, the information does not pass. It also says "Please note that these permissions only provide access to a user’s address and mobile phone number, not their friend's addresses or mobile phone numbers."

The primary question is why this information should ever be released.

Some commentators are suggesting that such personal information be removed from Facebook entirely. That is entirely within the hands of users.