all about TECH

On Friday, Facebook made yet another change its privacy policy, enabling third-party application developers to access your street address and cell phone number. This information was made public Friday night on the Facebook Developer Blog. The good news is that this is an opt-in feature, but there's a catch. Each time you install a Facebook app you're asked whether to allow access to your "basic information" and your "current address and mobile phone number," and if you click Allow, the information can be provided. Many people routinely do click Allow without necessarily reading the request for permission or thinking about the implications. The safest way to make sure your address and phone number aren't passed on to developers is to not provide it all, and if it is there in your Facebook profile, to remove it. I especially recommend that parents talk with their teens about removing this information from their profiles. Steps to remove contact information from your profile 1. Log into Facebook and click Home in the upper right corner. 2. Click Edit My Profile.

3. Click on Contact Information at the bottom of the left column.

4. Make sure that the Mobile Phone, Other Phone, and Address fields are blank.

Disclosure: Larry Magid is co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a nonprofit Internet safety organization that receives financial support from Facebook and other technology companies.