5 ms·
Facebook has your complete phonebook
.. and this is the tip of the database-iceberg ;)
- t3chbrainy 15y agofuck iphone app! is it standard opt-in?
- anorwell 15y agoThis comes from the "contact" section of your profile and is only shared if you type it there yourself.
- annon 15y agoNo, this definitely has things that have been uploaded from my iPhone address book.
- 13rules 15y agoAgree - I saw this a few days ago. When they are "syncing" their app they are taking your phone numbers, not just using it to display photos on your phone for your contacts, which is what I thought I remember this started out as.
- damoncali 15y agoAbsolutely not true. They ganked it from my phone.
- bunnyhero 15y agothat'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."
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Luuucas 15y agoit's only available if you have an iphone and use the facebook app (not sure about android)
- d0ne 15y agoNo, 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.
- Luuucas 15y agothanks for the update!
- haentz 15y agoAND if you agree to uploading it. I think you are asked the firs time you start the app. I didn't do this. So I only see the phone numbers of FB friends who added their numbers to the FB account. Edit: Also, this is really old news: http://www.blackberryforums.com/aftermarket-software/192419-facebook-application-uploads-phone-book-privacy-concerns.html http://www.blackberryforums.com/aftermarket-software/192419-...
- chmars 15y agoIt's only available if you sinced your phonebook with Facebook, there's no automatic sync (yet).
- dmazin 15y agoYou can see specifically who has been imported and delete them here: http://www.facebook.com/invite_history.php http://www.facebook.com/invite_history.php
- damoncali 15y agoYou 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.
- dmazin 15y agoI'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.
- d0ne 15y agoI 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"
- veyron 15y agoreminds me of the south park episode that ripped from the human centipede
- iamdave 15y agoThat episode was so poignant about people not reading TOS's it kind of hurt.
- qeorge 15y agoSame here on Android. The options were to add metadata like photos to contacts already in my phone, or to import my entire FB contact list into my phone (even if I didn't have them in my phone book). I chose the former. At no point was it mentioned that they would be helping themselves to the rest of my contacts, to whom I have no connection to on Facebook. Pissed off doesn't even begin to cover it.
- freshfunk 15y agoMisleading 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 15y agoIt 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 15y agoThis 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 15y agoNo - they also take phone numbers from your phone and upload them to Facebook (if you use a mobile Facebook app).
- kalleboo 15y agoNot "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 15y agoYou'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 15y agoOnly 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.
- cburgas 15y agoThe 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 15y agoThere 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 15y agoI 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 15y agoI'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 15y agoHeadline: "People outraged at feature they actively enabled".
- 15y ago
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- s1rech 15y agoFor 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 15y ago9 of 170 friends, not very complete.
- joeguilmette 15y agoPerhaps 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 15y agoThat'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 15y agoGlad I dumped their iOS app a while back...
- nysv 15y agoWrong. 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 15y agoEvery iPhone application can also access your entire phone book, too.
- emmett 15y agoYes, 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 15y agoFrom what I saw, the Android doesn't seem to give any warning about my contacts going to them.
- lukeschlather 15y agoThat'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 15y agoActually, no I did not know that and I find it hard to believe because I don't have a Facebook account.
- chmars 15y agoFacebook 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 15y agoSince 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 15y agoI 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 15y agoFacebook 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 15y agoI don't think that's my complete phonebook
- camwest 15y agoI just turned this feature on because I didn't know the iPhone supported it. Thanks Facebook!
- 01Michael10 15y agoI 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 15y agoWhere 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 15y agoI 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 15y agoWhen you delete your facebook, all you friends who were using this will no longer know your phone number.
- Navarr 15y agoMost annoying. It makes no attempts to delete multiple contact data. From all the syncing each non-facebook contact has 13 listings!
- Kwpolska 15y agoI am happy I didn't even agree to the T&C of the facebook app forced by my phone manufacturer.