Facebook has allowed thirty party application developer to access user’s address and mobile numbers, a move that could herald a new level of danger for Facebook users. Facebook had announced about it on Saturday on the developer blog that two new permissions called user_address and user_mobile_phone have been created. These can be used by applications to access the home addresses and mobile phone numbers of users, if defined in their accounts.Security researchers fear that Facebook’s decision to give applications access to people’s contact information could invite abuse from spammers and unscrupulous developers.
I realise that Facebook users will only have their personal information accessed if they ‘allow’ the app to do so, but there are just too many attacks happening on a daily basis which trick users into doing precisely this,” says Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.
The risk of spamming will increase as rogue application developers can develop applications to collect user contact information. Thus leading to sms spamming as well as selling contacts to cold-calling companies. Facebook developers have already been caught selling unique user identifiers (UIDs) to advertisers in the past. We advice our readers to immediately remove contact information from their Facebook profiles. Be safe and be secure! 
