As many are already well aware, today, Facebook quietly rolled out a new feature which probes users for their physical home addresses and contact numbers. This marks the social networking giant’s next major step into mobile–but also a significant compromise for user privacy.
At the comments section of Ars Technica, a couple commenters bring up what Facebook’s willingness to hand this information to app developers could mean in the long-run: Identity theft. While developers are required to admit that they’ve reviewed the site’s TOS for developers, many could freely exploit this information and not be held accountable until after the violations have already occurred. It already happened once before.
Some advocates are also alleging that no one should be surprised as Facebook’s service shouldn’t come without some privacy sacrifice, that the website’s profit margins are entirely reliant upon data mining and monetizing people’s geographical information was already the next step.
Not unexpectedly, this is causing some users to simply remove those pieces of information from their profiles and others, others to adjust their Facebook privacy settings, and yet in others, a more visceral reaction: To discontinue their use of the service.