I've talked about Facebook privacy before, however I've never discussed the issues surrounding third party applications and Facebook integration. Personally, I don't use any applications that integrate with Facebook. While I'm comfortable using Facebook to keep in touch with family and friends (as long as I keep on top of my privacy settings), once you start allowing third parties access to the information that you have in Facebook, it gets harder and harder to keep track of who has what. To be honest, I haven't seen any third party applications for Facebook that offer me any value, so I'm lucky in that regard.
Now that Facebook is offering to provide your address and phone number to third parties (albeit with your permission) the issue gets more complicated. Some of these developers are very small, and it's hard to be certain if they are taking the necessary precautions to protect your personal information.
The upshot is that I'd pay careful attention now when the "Request for Permission" pop-up appears on Facebook. If the developer is asking for your address and phone number, and this isn't information that is already readily available on the Internet, then you may want to think twice before clicking that "Allow" button.
Update 01-21-2011 - There is a new post on the Facebook Developer's Blog stating that this function has been "temporarily" removed.
Update 01-21-2011 - There is a new post on the Facebook Developer's Blog stating that this function has been "temporarily" removed.
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