You Might Want to Take Your Phone Number Off Your Facebook Profile

Facebook is about to make you mad. Facebook is about to make you storm off to your computer (oh, wait, you're already here?) and go into your profile settings, and very nearly delete yourself from Facebook, except how would you live with yourself not knowing which of the popular girls from high school have gotten fat, and how cute are those babies anyway, and what is that ex-boyfriend OH HE LOOKS RIDICULOUS...wait, what were we saying? Oh yeah, Facebook is about to make you mad. Real mad.

Remember when Facebook promised to love and honor and protect you, to always be your best friend and staunchest companion, to stand by you in times of trouble but also joy? No? Well, that's because it didn't. That's because Facebook, in fact, is using you, just like any company that wants to make money is using you. That's fine and dandy -- the key to a good transactional relationship, in fact -- presuming you're using it, too. And presuming you know it.

So, here's the deal. Facebook has announced in a letter to Congress that they'll be going forward with plans to give third parties access to your info, specifically, your phone numbers and home addresses. Despite concerns expressed by Reps. Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Joe Barton of Texas, Facebook continues to say that they'll let users decide what personal info is disseminated into the public via -- you guessed it -- privacy settings.

When or how this will happen remains TBD. Via Yahoo,

"We have not yet decided when or in what manner we will redeploy the permission for mobile numbers and addresses," the letter states. "We are evaluating whether and how we can increase the visibility of applications' request for permission to access user contact information. We are also considering whether additional user education would be helpful."

Consider yourself warned. This might be a good time to delete your phone number from your personal profile, lest you get really mad, delete your account completely, and never find out something about someone you don't speak to anymore anyway.

Facebook will soon share users' phone numbers and addresses with 3rd parties [The Lookout]