Facebook has your complete phonebook

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:<p><i>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]</i><p>EDIT: However, IIRC they added or strengthened this warning after the initial controversy.<p>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.

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

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).<p>Nevertheless i never explicitly opted into this which is bad.

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.<p>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?)

I opened this and discovered a lot of names and phone numbers I didn't recognize.<p>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?"<p>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).

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.<p>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.<p>I really believe that in the very long run, this culture of invasion will limit facebook's potential.<p>I'm sure this was in the TOS somewhere, but really? It's just disrespectful.

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

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.

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.

Where is this setting now?<p>Edit: Found it in Friends -&#62; some arrow button on the top-right -&#62; Sync contacts -&#62; Enable. So you can go there if you want to enable/disable the feature.<p>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 :(

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

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

For the iPhone, if you want to check if you are sharing your contacts, open the Facebook app, go to Main Menu &#62; Friends, click the icon on the upper right and then Sync Contacts.<p>I believe the syncing option is off by default

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.

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

You can see specifically who has been imported and delete them here: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/invite_history.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.facebook.com/invite_history.php</a>

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.

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.

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.)

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

I don't think that's my <i>complete</i> phonebook

9 of 170 friends, not very complete.

Since when are submissions requiring me to register or sign in ok on HN? Flagged.<p>If you wanted to make some point by posting this link you should have written your thoughts down somewhere and linked to that instead.

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

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

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

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!

I am happy I didn't even agree to the T&#38;C of the facebook app forced by my phone manufacturer.

fuck iphone app! is it standard opt-in?