UPDATE: Improvements to Permissions for Address and Mobile Number - Facebook Developers

In a later-in-the-night (11:25 PM PT) blog post, Facebook has backed off - for now - on allowing developers to access to users contact information until it makes sure it appeases privacy wonks (like me) and users concerns.

Over the weekend, we got some useful feedback that we could make people more clearly aware of when they are granting access to this data. We agree, and we are making changes to help ensure you only share this information when you intend to do so. We’ll be working to launch these updates as soon as possible, and will be temporarily disabling this feature until those changes are ready. We look forward to re-enabling this improved feature in the next few weeks.

I applaud Facebook's willingness to re-visit a feature and disable it until they have vetted it with their customer, maybe next time they can do it without all the bad media. Of course this is attention getting and in this Web 2.0 world why not just throw it over the fence and see how rabid the dogs are instead of taking a closer look beforehand.

BUT, as I posted yesterday, we all must assume responsibility for the protection of our private information, or a Peter aptly puts it, "we are the IT department of our lives."

I must say things are getting more transparent and the privacy controls on Facebook are starting to be much more useful these days. For more useful info on how to protect your privacy on Facebook go here. To see what types of info an application has access to on Facebook watch this short video on the Application Dashboard.

Improvements to Permissions for Address and Mobile Number - Facebook Developers