Facebook suspends program to offer app developers user information
(News from Finallyfast.com)
Reacting to the negative responses and speculation about security vulnerabilities, Facebook quickly suspended its new program to share users' personal information with app developers.
Four days after Facebook announced it would allow developers to access users' mobile phone numbers and home addresses, in an effort to facilitate app creation, the company rescinded the program, apparently in response to security implications.
"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," Facebook spokesman Douglas Purdy wrote on the company's Developer Blog. "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."
The original program allowed developers to view users' personal information as long as that user approved of it. This, according to Facebook's original announcement on it's developer blog, was enough to ensure privacy in the overall program. Also, the social networking site emphasized that the program would share individual users' information, and not that pertaining to their Facebook friends.
Soon after the company announced the program, security researchers criticized the company, providing some of the feedback Facebook may heed while updating the developer program.
"It won't take long for scammers to take advantage of this new facility, to use for their own criminal ends," security expert Graham Cluley wrote in a security firm's blog post. "Wouldn't it be better if only app developers who had been approved by Facebook were allowed to gather this information? Or - should the information be necessary for the application - wouldn't it be more acceptable for the app to request it from users, specifically, rather than automatically grabbing it?"
In the most recent blog post, Facebook maintained its position on the security and privacy standards imposed over the program.
"As with the other information you share through our permissions process, you need to explicitly choose to share this data before any application or website can access it, and you can not share your friends’ address or mobile number with applications," Purdy wrote.
If the company can make the adjustments the security industry is calling for, the program could be beneficial to both app developers and Facebook users. According to Purdy, allowing developers to access mobile phone numbers and addresses could facilitate ecommerce on Facebook apps, providing the resources for mobile alerts for online deals or automatic checkout.
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