Last Friday Facebook announced that now it will be possible for applications to gain access to users’ addresses and mobile phone numbers. If in the past the fact that applications could gain access to users’ personal information had raised some criticism now the issue has become even more sensitive.

In an attempt to avoid further criticism Facebook has changed the applications activation phase by adding an explicit request to allow access to the address and cell number, that will be enough to prevent any abuse?

In the past there have been reports of applications that, with the theoretical aim of showing funny messages or cute pictures but also to redirect users to sexy videos, actually sent spam. Some others, disguised as special offers of various kinds, induced users to provide their mobile phone number to which they sent spam SMSs which at that point were impossible to stop or to sell them to companies who call people to sell their products.

Now surely there are dishonest people who will develop applications for the sole purpose of obtaining mobile phones numbers and let’s remember that so much personal information in the hands of criminals can also be used for identity theft.

Too often users who activate applications aren’t aware of what they’re doing: they just quickly click on the commands that activate them, sometimes only because they were suggested by a friend. Now more than ever behaving in this way will mean playing with fire.

[ad name=”Google Adsense 468″]

I’m not interested in a rant against “lusers” nor in criminalizing Facebook even though I’m having some suspicion about the estimates that were made of the value of this social network. I have a Facebook account as well and I use it every day so I know what I’m talking about.

After seeing that applications require access to my data I decided to limit their use to the really useful ones being aware that the data on my profile can be accessed by anyone. Actually I was more surprised that only now address and mobile phone number have been made accessible but this news is just one more reason to avoid activating unnecessary applications.

More than ever Facebook users must be aware of what they’re doing when they activate an application and at least avoid the inclusion of data that they want to keep private in their profile. In essence they must wake up by themselves or risk being woken by a cold shower. This is nothing new but an increased risk must be matched by increased attention otherwise complaining is useless if you get conned by the first dishonest person passing by.