Facebook has your complete phonebook

https://www.facebook.com/friends/edit/?sk=phonebook

by ladino • 15 years ago

97 74 15 years ago

facebook.com

.. and this is the tip of the database-iceberg ;)

t3chbrainy• 15 years ago

fuck iphone app! is it standard opt-in?

anorwell• 15 years ago

This comes from the "contact" section of your profile and is only shared if you type it there yourself.

annon• 15 years ago

No, this definitely has things that have been uploaded from my iPhone address book.

damoncali3• 15 years ago

Absolutely not true. They ganked it from my phone.

bunnyhero• 15 years ago

that's what i thought too, until i read this on that page:

"Facebook Phonebook displays contacts you have imported from your phone, as well as your Facebook friends.

If you would like to remove your mobile contacts from Facebook, you need to disable the feature on your mobile phone and visit this page."

Luuucas2• 15 years ago

it's only available if you have an iphone and use the facebook app (not sure about android)

d0ne4• 15 years ago

No, any phone you install the Facebook App on. As Facebook has my phone contacts. I don't own an iPhone and only use a BB.

Luuucas2• 15 years ago

thanks for the update!

chmars2• 15 years ago

It's only available if you sinced your phonebook with Facebook, there's no automatic sync (yet).

dmazin2• 15 years ago

You can see specifically who has been imported and delete them here: http://www.facebook.com/invite_history.php

damoncali3• 15 years ago

You crossed a line on that one, facebook (again). It's getting really tiresome to keep updating my settings to keep you out of my life.

This sort of thing is what keeps people from doing anything substantial on facebook. Can you imagine "Facebook Docs", FMail, or anything of the sort? No. Because facebook would make it all public without telling anyone.

I really believe that in the very long run, this culture of invasion will limit facebook's potential.

I'm sure this was in the TOS somewhere, but really? It's just disrespectful.

dmazin2• 15 years ago

I'm pretty sure this information is explicitly imported by the user in Adroid/iPhone/BlackBerry apps when he or she allows the apps to use profile pictures as contact photos.

d0ne4• 15 years ago

I remember at some point when authorizing the installation of the FB BB App (well over a year ago) it mentioned something about needing access to contacts to work. I presumed this to mean for the local app not for them to suck them up into the cloud.

FB continues to lead the way when it comes to "it's in our TOS but don't go reading it because it won't match our marketing copy"

d0ne4• 15 years ago

We created Social Fortress[1] for this exact reason. Solve the root problem: Protect(AES256 Encrypt) and control your data transparently, prior to sending it anywhere, and you don't have to worry about this ever again.

[1] I'm involved with https://www.socialfortress.com

woodall• 15 years ago

Really neat idea, I like it. From watching the demo it would seem that anyone who I want to share with would also have to have SocialFortress installed as well?

agulbra• 15 years ago

People do substantial stuff on facebook. Good evidence of several hundred people doing so:

http://www.publicopiniononline.com/nationalnews/ci_18438058

The Barnum quotation comes to mind.

aristus• 15 years ago

What precisely are you upset about? I did not work on this feature, but I'm trying to understand your reaction.

Your friends entered their phone numbers. They are your friends. You can see those phone numbers if they choose to allow you to do so. You also (possibly) chose to import your address book of your friends and Facebook is showing them to you. The numbers are not public and everyone involved explicitly agreed to share the information. What part of that do you object to?

beatpanda• 15 years ago

There are phone numbers in that list of people who aren't on Facebook, and given Facebook's relationship with law enforcement, I'd rather they not have them. I understood the Facebook app to be syncing information with people who were already on Facebook, not my entire phone book.

damoncali3• 15 years ago

On further thought, it's possible I jumped the gun on this and that my phone contacts weren't actually taken without consent- my memory is imperfect.

That said, my opinion on facebook's attitude towards me and my privacy is unchanged. It's easy to get jumpy when a company disregards your privacy at every turn. Had this been on google (for example), I'm pretty sure I would not have jumped so quickly to what was probably an incorrect conclusion. But it was fb, who has repeatedly disregarded my wishes and abused my trust to the point where I literally treat everything I put on it as public.

abraham• 15 years ago

FMail already exists. https://www.facebook.com/about/messages/

freshfunk• 15 years ago

Misleading title but scary nonetheless. It's not my complete phonebook... not even close. But it does have numbers of friends who aren't in my phone (which is useful and possibly OK considering they added me as friends).

Nevertheless i never explicitly opted into this which is bad.

MiguelHudnandez• 15 years ago

It is just showing a list of friends that have put their phone numbers in their profile. For me, it's a list of about 20% of my friends. Certainly not contacts from my phone. I checked my phone and I had never turned on "Contact Sync."

I don't know what else someone could think "Contact Sync" does. But yes, if they ever turned that on automatically, for shame. I don't see any evidence that they did.

wf• 15 years ago

This has been around for a long time... it's the phone numbers that your friends on Facebook willingly submitted, they just make it easy for you to see whose phone number you already have access to through Facebook without having to go to someones profile.

brockf• 15 years ago

No - they also take phone numbers from your phone and upload them to Facebook (if you use a mobile Facebook app).

kalleboo• 15 years ago

Not "if you use a mobile Facebook app", more like "If you said yes to some option that allows them to do this". I've had the Facebook app on all my phones the past few years (1 java, 5 android, 1 symbian), and yet I have no phone contacts here.

0x0• 15 years ago

You're wrong, it's actually a copy of the contacts stored on your phone. On my account, the local pizza place and haircutters are listed, which definitively do not have facebook user profiles.

RandallBrown• 15 years ago

Only if you imported your contacts. That list was only my friends on Facebook who put their numbers on Facebook. Most of them are not in my address book.

cburgas2• 15 years ago

The contacts listed on that page aren't even in my phonebook.

It seems like that page only lists the numbers from people who willingly shared their number if you canceled out of the import feature after installing the facebook app on your phone.

extension• 15 years ago

There was a hubbub about this a while ago. How it works is, you have to install the Facebook app on your phone and then enable contact syncing. When you do that, you get a big confirmation screen that says this:

If you enable this feature, all contacts from your device (name, email address, phone number) will be sent to Facebook and be subject to Facebook's Privacy Policy, and your friends' profile photos and other info from Facebook will be added to your iPhone address book. Please make sure your friends are comfortable with any use you make of their information. [Cancel] [I Agree]

EDIT: However, IIRC they added or strengthened this warning after the initial controversy.

I would argue this is bad UX because it forces the user to all at once make such a big nebulous decision about what their friends are comfortable with.

cnvogel• 15 years ago

I acknowledge that. I remember that the facebook-app on my android phone asked me whether I wanted to sync my phones addressbook to FB or not. I've chosen not to, and thus there are no phone-numbers FROM MY PHONE shown on the linked facebook-page, only the numbers my friends have put in themselves (some aren't even in my phone...).

jackowayed• 15 years ago

I'm pretty sure I said no when that happened, and I can't find a setting anywhere, yet that page definitely has numbers that weren't put on Facebook by the owner. I wonder if the HTC Facebook integration (I have a Droid Incredible, and I knew that there was phonebook integration in the other direction--friends show up in my phonebook if their number is on facebook even if I've never directly added them). It's possible that they either automatically did the sync or asked in a not very clear way when I first set up my phone and was dying to click through all the prompts so I could use it.

reso• 15 years ago

Headline: "People outraged at feature they actively enabled".

pbreit• 15 years ago

Probably a better headline is something like "People moderately surprised at something that sorta makes sense after a reminder".

zemanel• 15 years ago

"actively enabled" doesn't necessarily mean "actively conscient of the full consequences"

sehugg• 15 years ago

It'd be better if the warning said "sent and stored". Reading the Privacy Policy didn't give me fair warning that this info would be retained in this specific instance.

gmac• 15 years ago

This is more than bad UX: asking me to speak for the privacy preferences of all my Facebook friends in one go is ludicrous, and more-or-less asking to be lied to.

It's like 20-page T&Cs, only worse. We all know that approximately nobody actually reads the T&Cs. But we can be damn sure that absolutely nobody will actually go and ask all their device contacts whether they're happy to have their details uploaded to Facebook.

res0nat0r3• 15 years ago

How is any of this Facebooks problem let alone responsibility to sort out for you?

patrickaljord• 15 years ago

I don't own a smartphone and therefore have never installed the facebook app yet I can see my list of contacts with their mobile phone numbers. My guess is that this page just lists your contacts that are sharing their mobile phone numbers with you and it has nothing to do with using the mobile Facebook app.

user-id• 15 years ago

It's both. If you have contacts on a phone that aren't your Facebook friends, they'll be merged.

s1rech• 15 years ago

For the iPhone, if you want to check if you are sharing your contacts, open the Facebook app, go to Main Menu > Friends, click the icon on the upper right and then Sync Contacts.

I believe the syncing option is off by default

sek• 15 years ago

9 of 170 friends, not very complete.

joeguilmette• 15 years ago

Perhaps I'm a bit weird, but it doesn't entirely surprise or upset me. In fact, I just found a lot of people I'd lost touch with and didn't think to check for them on Facebook.

They should have asked, but whatever. Are you shocked? Iirc I synced my Address Book to Facebook anyhow.

My Address Book is on Apple's server, my TimeMachine drive, Google's servers, apparently Facebook, and any number of other online services. I don't really care. I'd much rather have the data backed up than risk losing it. And having it on Facebook has obvious utility.

nirvana• 15 years ago

That's great, now how do I export all that data into AddressBook on my Mac? If I need to call Joe, I'm not logging into Facebook to look up his number, unless I'm desperate. I'm looking in the AddressBook. So, if Facebook wants to be more hot than crazy on the crazy/hot graph, they should let me import this data to my address book!

jonknee• 15 years ago

Glad I dumped their iOS app a while back...

nysv• 15 years ago

Wrong. I have used the facebook app on Nokia symbian phone, but I only see a short list of friends who have shared their number. Not even close to being a full address book.

jeffreymcmanus• 15 years ago

Every iPhone application can also access your entire phone book, too.

emmett2• 15 years ago

Yes, of course I knew - they had a big flashing warning sign that they were syncing your contacts to their cloud that you have to click through.

I actually like this a lot. If they then shared those phone numbers publicly I would complain...but why would I not want to sync my phonebook to Facebook (anymore than I'd not want to sync my phonebook to Google, which I certainly do as well?)

keeperofdakeys• 15 years ago

From what I saw, the Android doesn't seem to give any warning about my contacts going to them.

lukeschlather• 15 years ago

That's rather helpful actually. I just wish it matched my Gmail contacts. (And since I synced both to my Droid, you would think they would match.)

tty• 15 years ago

Actually, no I did not know that and I find it hard to believe because I don't have a Facebook account.

chmars2• 15 years ago

Facebook hasn't my complete phonebook. Following your URL, I get a list of phone numbers of some friends, not my complete phonebook, i.e., phone numbers entered by my friends and not from my phonebook.

sjs• 15 years ago

Since when are submissions requiring me to register or sign in ok on HN? Flagged.

If you wanted to make some point by posting this link you should have written your thoughts down somewhere and linked to that instead.

dendory• 15 years ago

I have my number in Facebook, but my friends dont see it (I checked) so this happens only for people who actively published their phone number, or a 'friend' did it for them.

altano• 15 years ago

Facebook only has phone numbers posted by my friends themselves and my Windows Phone syncs my Facebook contacts. Bi-directional sync of your phone's contacts back to Facebook appears to be an iOS/Android only thing.

alantrrs• 15 years ago

I don't think that's my complete phonebook

camwest• 15 years ago

I just turned this feature on because I didn't know the iPhone supported it. Thanks Facebook!

01Michael10• 15 years ago

I don't have a mobile phone so it only shows my Facebook friends who publish their numbers. Nothing to see here...

My phone number is the only public piece of information I have on Facebook. That's only because it's a Google voice number which is the best thing since sliced bread.

orijing• 15 years ago

Where is this setting now?

Edit: Found it in Friends -> some arrow button on the top-right -> Sync contacts -> Enable. So you can go there if you want to enable/disable the feature.

When I installed the app, Facebook didn't even ask me if I wanted to enable it. I actually manually typed all of my contacts instead. I wish I knew about it before :(

AgentConundrum• 15 years ago

I opened this and discovered a lot of names and phone numbers I didn't recognize.

As it turns out, these contacts were all from my dad. I used his blackberry once last year to check my Facebook and I guess it loaded his contacts into my Facebook account. I don't remember authorizing it to do that (though it was likely in something I just clicked through). Still, this seems like an easy way to steal contact lists from people - "oh hey, can I check my Facebook real quick?"

Like I said, this was a year ago, so I'm sure things have changed (another commenter mentions "a hubbub about this a while ago"), but neither I nor my dad realized what had happened until now (he still doesn't know, I suspect).

anonymoushn• 15 years ago

When you delete your facebook, all you friends who were using this will no longer know your phone number.

Navarr• 15 years ago

Most annoying. It makes no attempts to delete multiple contact data. From all the syncing each non-facebook contact has 13 listings!

Kwpolska• 15 years ago

I am happy I didn't even agree to the T&C of the facebook app forced by my phone manufacturer.

Facebook has your complete phonebook

Related Stories