The Hacker News
Facebook made a rapid retreat Monday (January 17) announcing that it would "temporarily" disable the functionality of a new brand that allows applications to third harvest phone numbers of users and home addresses.

The function began with a blog Facebook quiet afternoon Friday, January 14.

He said the device would allow users to "easily share your address and cell phone with a shopping site to streamline the buying process, or you subscribe to the minute special offers directly to your mobile phone."

In other words, Facebook has been giving advertisers and third-party application developers access to the numbers of mobile users and addresses.

Over the weekend, were sentenced by security experts and based privacy advocates.

"It does not take long for crooks to take advantage of this new facility for their harmful intentions," said Graham Cluley, senior consultant for security firm Sophos, the British.

Users would allow application developers to get their addresses and telephone numbers, but Cluley wrote that "there are just too many attacks occur on a daily basis that encourage users to do exactly that."

"Now, application developers shadow is easier than ever to collect more personal information about users," continued Cluley. "You can imagine, for example, that the bad guys could create a rogue app that collects cell phone numbers and then use this information for SMS spam or sell your information to companies who cold-call."

A current example of this type of attack requires a viral video of a girl so distracted by text messages fall into a fountain in the mall.

Facebook worm is sending messages read "Girl falls into a fountain While text messages." But the link is part of the post is malicious, directing users to a page that asks their names, friends lists and user IDs.

In fact, almost all of them are scams - in which the alleged sex tape of Miley Cyrus so many sexy video - to trick users into providing personal information.

Three days after the service was introduced, Facebook answered the gap with a carefully worded message to the Facebook Developers Blog.

"[W] e have some useful information that could make people more aware of when it grants access to these data," the announcement read in part. "[W] e are making changes to ensure that you do not share this information when you do. We will work to get these updates as soon as possible, and temporarily disable this function until these changes are ready.

"We are excited to turn this improved performance in the coming weeks."


News Source : Google

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