
Facebook Apps Must Now Ask Users for More Specific Permissions - xaverius
http://mashable.com/2010/06/30/facebook-app-permissions/
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nimrody
This sort of system never seems to work in practice.

Very quickly you get to a point where every app asks for so many permissions
it does not need. You end up just "clicking through" the installation without
much thought.

Either developers are lazy or just want to be on the safe side.

Every Android app that I have downloaded requests network access (Even simple
games do!), contacts access and tons of other capabilities. I suspect most
users just learn to ignore these requests and blindly install the
application...

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patio11
You might also not want to _murder_ your MAU by upgrading your app in such a
way that your permissions would broaden, causing every user to get BIG SCARY
WARNING CLICK TO DENY.

Incidentally, we are seeing -- again -- that people's beliefs about how much
they value privacy ("Privacy is important to me: 9 out of 10.") contrast
sharply with their actions ("I will give you my email password for a chocolate
bar, hehe, sure.").

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aufreak3
Good move, but not enough. Though you're now more informed, you still don't
have much control over using an app other than deciding whether use it or not.
Its not like you can say "this app shouldn't be needing access to my friends
birthdays, let me disable that".

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karanbhangui
You realize that's not really possible right? Apps rely on the permissions
they ask you for their core functionality. If it can't post to your wall, for
example, to help spread the app, it's not really worth it for you to use up
the server's resources.

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loewenskind
Not really. The whole Facebook scandal has been exactly about the fact that
apps need one thing (usually just your name for display purposes and the
ability to write on your wall) but it was taking things like your email, what
friends you have and so on.

Why does it need my email if I have all the email sending functionality off (I
always do)? The applications could gracefully scale back based on what they
can see.

The reason it's not really possible is that most of the advertising revenue
being generated around Facebook comes from selling your information.

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karanbhangui
I guess that's fair. It should be against the TOS to ask for more data than
you need, and result in a takedown after a warning.

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whimsy
Quite the 180, Facebook. My data belongs to me is a core belief now?

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mrvir
No, they just want you to bear the responsibility of using third party apps.

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digamber_kamat
Thank Goa. Finally they came up with this.

