This is why I’ve never liked Facebook: Facebook thinks twice on giving dev access to phone, address data.

Facebook has put off its plan to allow developers access to users’ phone numbers and home addresses. The company posted an update on its Developer Blog Tuesday morning, saying that it got “useful feedback” about the decision and that it would be making changes so that it’s clearer when users are about to share such sensitive info. As a result, the “feature” is being turned off until a better solution is found.

Privacy advocates got up in arms after the company announced that developers would be able to access a whole new level of personal info through its API, as long as the users gave them permission. Security firm Sophos issued a solemn warning on its blog about the move; the firm pointed out that Facebook app developers already manage to trick users into giving them access to personal data, and the situation will only get worse with real addresses and phone numbers in the mix.

That’s so far over the line of acceptable web policy that I’m honestly a bit amazed that Facebook even tried it at all. But that’s what I’ve come to expect from the giant social networking site; they appear to have insufficient regard for users’ privacy, and are constantly trying to push the envelope and get away with abuse of their users’ personal data.

In addition to their deliberate attempts to spread and monetize users’ personal info, Facebook’s software is notoriously prone to hacking and spamming — and not just the visible UI that everyone sees. Their back-end API (used by application programmers) has also had more than few serious privacy-related problems.

I’ve never understood why more people aren’t concerned about Facebook’s serial intrusions into areas where they have no business being. If you’re a Facebook user, you’d better keep a close watch on their ridiculously complicated settings/permissions page, because they’re going to continue doing sneaky things like this.