So iOS 6 was just released (yay!) and it has brought some welcome changes. Turn-by-turn GPS, for example. But it has also brought about a disturbing problem, and I’m not sure how many people have realized it yet.
When I upgraded earlier today, I logged into Facebook in my phone settings to enable the new Facebook integration on my phone. All my Facebook friends’ profile pictures and info were synced into my phone contacts, which was fine. Until my mom called and her Facebook profile picture came up on the call screen.
The Problem
You see, my mother is a unique individual. She wants nothing to do with Farm Town or being one of the 3% who reposts those status updates about cancer. She just wanted to play a particular game on her phone that awards bonuses via Facebook. So she created a fake email address and a Facebook account with a different name - that way she could play her game without having to “friend” everyone she knows.
Mom hasn’t upgraded to iOS 6 yet, but when I did, my phone recognized her number as being associated with her Facebook account. So under her name in my contacts, I now have Facebook: [Mom's alias] listed.
This means that every one of her real life friends will now see this random name listed in their contacts and wonder why she’s using a fake name.
The Implications for Everyone Else
Are the dots connecting in your heads yet? Imagine an individual who has a separate Facebook account because s/he is having an affair, impersonating another person, or participating in some other unsavory online activity. Everyone with an iPhone will now have the name of that account in their contacts - without the Facebook account’s owner doing anything to allow it.
Another scenario - one of my Facebook friends has “Dat Ass” listed as her middle name. (Long story, but it’s a joke between a bunch of us.) Imagine that her [employer, grandparent, pastor, fill in the blank] has her name in his/her iPhone. Her Facebook name will be right there for any or all of them to see. That could result in some awkward conversations.
For that matter, several of my friends use their first and middle name only to prevent their employers from finding their profiles. BUSTED! Now that info is readily associated with their phone numbers.
From my extensive googling at my mom’s request, it appears that no one has thought of this. (Or at least Google hasn’t indexed anything about this issue yet.) Right now there is no option to prevent iOS 6 from pulling your Facebook information to store in your friends’ contact lists, and the scary thing is that you don’t have to own an iPhone for your info to be at risk.
Your Move, Facebook and Apple
I’m very interested to see how long it will take before the rest of the world notices all this unauthorized Facebook info being passed from iPhone to iPhone. I’m even more interested to find out how Facebook and Apple will resolve this and/or defend themselves. This could cause serious problems for a myriad of reasons.
In the meantime, if any of you see articles about how to prevent this from happening, my mom would really like to hide her fake profile before her friends start figuring out thinking she’s a weirdo.
That is bat ass crazy and wrong on so many levels…
I've had an HTC Windows phone for about a year now and all of my facebook friends are listed on my contacts list. I'm guessing that you mom should have also created a 'fake' email account and used that on her fake facebook account. I'd also recommend her not putting her phone number on the facebook page, either. Making sure both of those items are different than her real self should break that bond.
Some girls dad called my son an 'angry redneck' - lol, long story - but for a long time he had Angry as his first name as a joke.
We should still try to do lunch some time.
Oh no, that's the thing. She has an entirely different email address and her phone number isn't on Facebook at all. But because she has accessed Facebook on her phone and iPad, it knows.
That stinks! Yep, there are likely going to be a lot of questions coming because of this.
Andrea, I am really slow so I don't understand the problem. Is the problem that your phone has integrated your FB friends list with your phone contacts? I had an HTC phone a few years ago which did the same thing, so it's not new…that's why I am assuming that you are describing something else that I just don't understand.
I have never used FB on my iPod or my Android phone, but I do play some of those games that use your FB friend list. I hope that isn't affected somehow.
The problem is that it's syncing information from the account of XYZ to ABC's contact information in someone elses phone because ABC accessed ABC's secret account XYZ from ABC's phone. Thus ABC's regular info and ABC's secret XYZ info are being associated with ACB's regular contact info in contact lists of other people.
I really wish I could delete some of the FB synced info on my android too. I have a few people that use aliases and I have my own contact info for them stored, but the fb sync things screws it all up. I had the entire thing turned off for a while but as soon as I login to FB from my phone… boom, messed up again. I'm sure they thought it was a convenience for it to automatically recognize peoples information and group it together, I do like the syncing but please don't decide for me that the nickname and the real person are the same person, maybe i don't want them listed that way. /rantover.
Hey so to solve everyones problems with this AND PLEASE PUT THIS OUT THERE AS MUCH AS YOU CAN. YOU CAN PREVENT THIS. They have to go into the FB app on the iPhone, go under >Account Setting then go to >Privacy and then click under >How You Connect (which is under Control Your Default Privacy).
From there you can make it so everyone has access to your info, friends of friends or just friends.
Hope this helps EVERYONE out .
OH ALSO - if you log into Facebook onto the computer under >PRIVACY SETTINGS it will say >How to Connect for those of you non-iphone users which many of my friends aren't.
*frantically running to facebook to check information* Good grief. You're right, this is going to blow some serious shit wide open. I wonder why nobody has really noticed yet?