Facebook letting apps have your email address

01.21.10 Posted in Hints and Tips, News by Mathew

News today that Facebook are changing the way applications within Facebook can communicate with the users of those apps; Previously, if the application wanted to give users information, it would do so via a ‘notification’, which would appear in the notifications list on your facebook page. Now, you are forced to give the application your email address if you want to hear from the app.

From what I have seen so far, chances are the best option is to not allow application’s access to your email address in the first place. I haven’t seen any app notifications that were important in any way, so this might in fact be a way for users to reduce the amount of stuff they are being bombarded with, which might be a nice side effect.

That being said, I can imagine times when communicating between the developers of your favourite facebook app, and you, might actually be useful, and it boggles the mind to understand why Facebook weren’t smarter about this; First off, most users will not want to give out their email address to heaps of unknown app developers, we all get enough spam as it is.

Facebook could have moved these notifications to email, but made it so that app developers had to send that email through Facebook. Facebook could then mail out the stuff to the users email addresses, the end result being the same, but users email addresses would never need to be shared with the application developer. This idea improves privacy for users, gives facebook more control and leverage, and even allows facebook to think about charging application developers to use the system.

The recent privacy settings changes, coupled with this bone headed move, makes me wonder if the decline of facebook has begun. Time will tell.