Starting Today, Facebook Apps Can Ask You To Hand Over Your Email Address

http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/20/facebook-app-email/

by icey • 17 years ago

17 21 17 years ago

techcrunch.com

tedunangst2• 17 years ago

TC title: Starting Today, Facebook Apps Can Ask You To Hand Over Your Email Address

HN title: Starting Today, Facebook Apps Can Require You To Hand Over Your Email Address

There's a difference.

nomatteus2• 17 years ago

From the first paragraph: "Today, Facebook is granting developers on Platform the ability to request (or require) users to hand over their email addresses so they they can send periodic messages directly to users." (Emphasis added)

So it's up to the developer whether it's optional or not.

Also see the Facebook wiki for more info:

http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Roadmap_Email

edw519• 17 years ago

TC changed "Require" to "Ask" in their headline after icey posted it here. Lighten up.

tedunangst2• 17 years ago

Sorry, the post was only 5 minutes old when I said that, seemed a narrow window to change in. My bad.

icey• 17 years ago

I submitted via the bookmarklet, I don't change the titles at all. I have, however, modified my submission to match the current headline. Sorry for the confusion.

ajcronk• 17 years ago

I wonder how much it costs Facebook to send all of those application notification emails? It seems this announcement is decentralizing the sending of those emails, and putting the onus on companies.

tarkin2• 17 years ago

Starting from last week, I changed my facebook email address to a throw away email address. Not as an impressive piece of foresight, however: simply to stop companies finding my facebook details via my email address. Still, I'm especially glad I did now.

senthil_rajasek• 17 years ago

Here is the facebook announcement, http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=355

Applications can request you to share email addresses explicitly via their "extended permission" api...

Its upto the user to share or not...

westbywest2• 17 years ago

My curiosity hovers over how much freedom FB app developers have in the "Request for Special Permissions" dialog.

Will the FB API force them to disclose the fact their app wants to email you directly, as is shown in the screencap, or could this fact be obscured with clever word choice or some other diversion in the dialogs?

If the latter, then this new feature sits somewhere close to sanctioned phishing. Once an untrusted 3rd party has your email address, FB can't revoke it. The recent stories about Farmville don't give me much reason to trust such 3rd parties.

Indeed at that point, FB, along with whatever role FB had hoped to play in data-mining the traffic it sends to your address, become entirely irrelevant.

Which begs the question: why does FB chose to cast itself as the easily expendable middleman?

novum• 17 years ago

I agree with you, but your use of "begs the question" is wrong, and given that I'm in a pedantic mood (and that this is a mistake I've seen before on HN), I'd like to offer a word on the subject.

Begging the question is a logical fallacy in which you essentially assume your conclusion as part of formulating your argument. Instead, you probably mean something more like "Which brings up the question".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

westbywest2• 17 years ago

Fair enough, and thx for the reference. Idiom and logic rarely get along together.

sachinag• 17 years ago

"Raises the question" is a perfectly acceptable usage.

ohashi• 17 years ago

Hellllloooooo Mailinator.

nollidge• 17 years ago

Or just click "Don't Allow".

nomatteus2• 17 years ago

Or you can use Facebook's proxy option (something like username@proxyemail.facebook.com) so app devs don't actually see your real email address. Same sort of thing that Craigslist does.

benofsky3• 17 years ago

Yet another move by Facebook to show utter disrespect for their users. Sure, we will all read the dialog before giving away our email address. However, 90% of Facebook's users wont.

Proof: when they updated the privacy settings a few months ago to default to public. Pretty much everyone in my friends list now have their profiles fully public. Craziness.

steveklabnik3• 17 years ago

How is giving people the option to make things public disrespectful?

benofsky3• 17 years ago

Because Facebook know very well that people don't read things, they should but they don't, and they take advantage of this. The point is it shouldn't default to public (which it does if you've never touched your privacy settings which previously defaulted to public).

Starting Today, Facebook Apps Can Ask You To Hand Over Your Email Address

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