Facebook phone app attempts to seize ALL YOUR MAIL Facebook has found an innovative way to encourage use of its email service: reach into users' mobile phone address books and change the email addresses stored against each contact to their Facebook email account. It has emerged that Facebook's war on competing services now extends beyond the manipulated Timeline and into …
Clue to the clueless: so Facebook updates your mobile contacts.
Then the changes get synced back to your Gmail contacts.
Then the changes get synced with your Outlook address book.
At which point Facebook has inveigled itself into all your contacts data in a way you'd be VERY unlikely to have wanted, and will get copies of all emails you send via their addresses. Now, I don't know where you come from, but in the UK that could very well fall under the Computer Misuse Act and earn its perpetrators solid jail-time.
I don't have the facebook app installed. I do have my contacts linked to their facebook profiles though so that Sense UI can scrape their accounts for extra contact info. It's just a useful feature that means I don't have to manually enter missing email addresses etc.
When facebook changed everybody's default email to @facebook.com guess what happened to every email address in my contact list...
"what's the advice for those of us who haven't rooted our phones and thus aren't actually able to remove the "operator installed" apps."
Don't allow the Facebook app to upgrade to anything beyond the version that came with the phone - and hope it's a version that doesn't do insidious things like this.
'what's the advice for those of us who haven't rooted our phones and thus aren't actually able to remove the "operator installed" apps'
I don't use neither Facebook nor mobile phones so I may be way off the mark, but... isn't there anywhere in the application where you enter your account details? If so, presumably setting those to a non-existing account should stop the app working. Or does the ruddy thing do the contact book fiddling business without even being logged in with a Facebook account? If so, talking to your favourite consumer group / solicitor may be in order, as the legality of the operation seems a bit dubious to me.
"what's the advice for those of us who haven't rooted our phones and thus aren't actually able to remove the "operator installed" apps"
1. Disable auto-updating for the FB app from Google Play
2. Clear all the data for the app by long-pressing the app in Launcher and select Application Info, then click "Clear Data"
This should make the FB Android app unused and uninitiated.
SHUT DOWN YOUR PHONE completely, then restart (do NOT reboot)
Now Never, NEVER EVER use the FB app, use the web interface instead
Just did this on my Experia, worked fine. You could probably just turn off the synch in "settings > accounts and synch" (same place you can delete the account by the way), but I never use the app anyway so just starved it as an earlier poster recommended.
I've just gone through the utter mess that is my Android address book and see no evidence of this happening. Quite a few people in the address book have their Facebook connection indicated but there are no facebook.com email addresses.
Now, if Facebook are doing this, I suspect it could amount to destruction of property. Not the kind of thing they'd want to be caught doing.
If I remember correctly, Google stopped any Facebook contact integration when Facebook didn't want to 'share' back.
So, I might be wrong, but perhaps this only affects older versions of Android? My ICS Android phone doesn't have any Facebook contact integration even though I have the app installed...
When you install Facebook app, it asks you what you want to sync. Everything, just contacts or nothing.
This is the Android security measure, it is basically Facebook's app, asking for permission to access your and update your phone.
Anyone who chose anything other than 'nothing' deserves everything they get.
I too disabled the Facebook contacts syncing. It annoyed the hell out of me when I first got my Galaxy S about 18 months ago, so much so that I wiped the phone and started from scratch again, so now whenever I do wipe the phone or upgrade the version of Android (such as CM9 which I installed last week) I make sure the Facebook app doesn't sync.
I think most of my Facebook friends don't bother updating their mobile numbers and contact information on Facebook anyway when they get new phones etc (hardly any of them port their numbers, they just change their phones and send out lots of texts to friends saying... "here's my new number").
I presume this is also related to Facebook changing saved e-mail addresses on Facebook to @facebook.com e-mail addresses recently. Oh well, the 2 or 3 contacts I have e-mail addresses stored for are okay.
Mine's the one with the little black book of numbers in the pocket.
Rob
Regarding your destruction of property comment - does it breach any computer misuse acts? Or is this going to be yet another case of "individual hacks company and goes to jail, company hacks individuals' data by the thousands and gets off with it"? Can they be sued for the cost of replacing the data/fixing the problem just like an individual would? Thought not.
If you have a phone with a pre-installed version of facebook, you can clear the data for the app (under settings) and it will no longer have your credentials to login to the filthy malware pedlar's servers.
something like (depending on version):
settings -> apps -> filthbook -> clear data
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