These worries are true for anything you install on Android. This is just another app, just presente differently.
Consider the source. FB has much higher and invasive corporate and government connections who would love to use that data than the SuperGronk "just another app" game company does.
Why differentiate? I see FB as a phishing exercise, a specific app may be more like spearphishing.
Works for me. Phishing with a large number of beneficiaries.
Re:Facebook Home
by illuminate on Thursday April 04, 2013 @04:37PM
(#5495137)
How is that cynical? Facebook's primary product is data mining. You are what they're selling. Not your content (directly, at least.)
it might just be a hook to induce more people to install a facebook app and/or use facebook. i don't use the facebook app myself (as you say, i don't want facebook having access to my phone), but if i did i would see no real privacy reason not to use this one too.
Re:Facebook Home
by mcintyre1994 on Thursday April 04, 2013 @05:08PM
(#5495322)
Do any phones (other than the Nexus line) come without a Facebook app? It was pre-installed on my Sony Ericsson, and I can't even remove it without rooting.
This 'app' though, is much more. It takes over all your home screens, and the launcher, so if Facebook were data mining on it I believe they could have information about every application you have installed, when you use them etc. To my knowledge, apps don't get to look at that sort of stuff by default.
I have a Samsung Note 2, from Verizone. While it came with a lot of apps I don't want (like the NHL app), it did not have the FB app.
I see what appears to be a fine product, which adds a lot of desirable features for communication -- chat heads look especially nice -- but all I can really wonder is what else Facebook might be mining out of my phone usage that the regular Facebook App doesn't do already. Maybe they want to take over SMS messaging on the phone completely and route it through Facebook (centralized chat, it's not even unreasonable), or perhaps automatically upload everything and let you filter expoosed data after the fact (which is too late to trust that it's ever gone). When it comes pre-installed on the phone, they don't even have to ask for permission for everything.