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It's the flip-side of enjoying instant communication with your friends.
Facebook has courted a fresh privacy row by allowing developers of apps access to sensitive information including telephone numbers and addresses.
The social networking site announced the change on its blog, saying: 'We are now making a user's address and mobile phone number accessible.'
Internet security analysts and privacy experts are now advising people to remove their phone numbers and addresses from the site.
Privacy row: Facebook has courted new controversy by allowing app developers access to sensitive information including telephone numbers and addresses
While Facebook users must grant individual applications permission to access their details, it is likely that many who have clicked their approval plenty of times before will not notice the change in terms.
They will pass on their contact details unknowingly, leaving them more vulnerable to becoming victims of spam, it is feared.
Graham Cluley, of IT security firm Sophos, said: 'The ability to access users' home addresses will also open up more opportunities for identity theft, combined with the other data that can already be extracted from Facebook users' profiles.
'You have to ask yourself - is Facebook putting the safety of its 500-plus million users as a top priority with this move?'
Facebook, which gives advertisers the ability to target users according to their stated interests, geographical location and other insights, has been criticised increasingly over the years for how it handles the privacy of its account holders.
Facebook founder: Mark Zuckerberg's site has been criticised increasingly over the years for how it handles the privacy of its account holders
The official Facebook blog post on the subject explains that the company says: 'Because this is sensitive information, we have created the new user address and user mobile phone permissions.
'These permissions must be explicitly granted to your application by the user via our standard permissions dialogues.'
It also says that people are merely able to grant external developers the ability to see their own details, rather than those of their friends.
But it is often unclear who exactly is behind the small and seemingly harmless pieces of software available via Facebook, which many users enjoy signing up for in order to brighten up their profile pages or to play games or quizzes with friends.
Facebook has opted against a systematic program of vetting potential applications, such as that by Apple.
The website therefore inevitably hosts a number of potentially rogue, independent applications that have been designed by third parties to misleadingly gain access to users' information, and farm it out on as wide a scale as possible.
In a statement issued last night, a spokesman for the website said: 'We want to make it easy for people to take the information they've entered into Facebook with them across the web.
'This new permission gives people the ability to control and share their mobile phone number and address with the websites and apps they want to use.'
Last year, Facebook completely redesigned its privacy settings in response to an international backlash against how the social network had handled the personal information of its 500million users.
The modifications allowed users to decide which aspects of their data is available to view online.
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