Facebook to Let Users Limit Data Revealed by Log

SAN FRANCISCO - Trying to become even bigger, Facebook will allow users to reveal a little less.

The company announced on Wednesday that its 1.3 billion users would soon be able to limit the information they reveal to other websites or mobile applications when they log in through their Facebook identities. The move responds to longtime complaints from many users who object to requests for personal data simply to check out a new site or app when using the Facebook sign-in.

Although an app or site - such as Spotify or Flipboard - will be able to ask for whatever information it likes, a user logging in through Facebook will be able to limit what is revealed to the owner of the app to just an email address and public profile information like name and gender. The app can ask for more information later, but the user will be able to decide whether to share more.

The company is also testing a feature that will allow people to choose to log in to other sites or apps through a button marked 'Log in anonymously.' The users would not be anonymous to Facebook but no personal information would be revealed to the outside service.

'We need to do everything we can to put people first and give people the tools they need to sign in and trust your apps,' said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's co-founder and chief executive, during a speech to software developers in San Francisco.

While Facebook routinely scans its users' posts, 'likes' and biographical data to target advertising, it has strong business motivations for giving people more control over how their data is shared, especially outside of the service.

Mr. Zuckerberg's long-term goal is for Facebook to be not just a social network, but also a platform on which many other apps run, with Facebook accounts used as a universal identity card to log in everywhere. Widespread use of Facebook IDs would increase the company's influence in the technology world, keep people attached to the service and give it valuable data to help sell ads.

To persuade outside developers to offer Facebook log-in on their sites and mobile apps, Facebook has agreed in the past to share a lot of information about its users, from birth dates and likes to lists of their friends and even photos.

That has led to abuses, with games like FarmVille at one point badgering all of a player's friends to sign up to try to increase use. But the policy has also helped Facebook get about half of the market for social log-ins, although Google is a fast-rising challenger and other services like LinkedIn and Twitter are popular log-ins for certain applications.

The company says that about 10 billion social log-ins were made last year using Facebook IDs. Industry analysts say social log-ins are rising in part because cellphone users find it more convenient to click one button to log in with a social network instead of typing out new account information for every app.

However, Facebook's user surveys and outside research have found that many consumers are not happy with this system.

Patrick Salyer, chief executive of Gigya, which helps about 700 companies manage social log-ins, said a 2013 survey by his company found that nearly half the people had not used social log-ins.

'The No. 1 thing they were afraid of was their data is being sold,' he said. 'Another concern was that their news feed would be spammed without permission or their friends would be spammed without permission.'

Privacy has been a sore point for Facebook, which has a long history of promising to protect user privacy, then proceeding to violate it.

In 2012, the company agreed to settle charges brought by the Federal Trade Commission that it had disclosed users' personal information without their permission to outside app developers and advertisers. The company is still tied up in court over its practice of turning likes and comments made by users into ads sent to their friends.

Regulators' distrust of Facebook on privacy is so high that when the F.T.C. approved the company's $19 billion acquisition of the mobile messaging service WhatsApp a few weeks ago, a top agency official formally warned Facebook not to break WhatsApp's privacy promises.

This month, Facebook made another move to allow users more control over their privacy when it rolled out Nearby Friends, a feature that allows smartphone users in the United States to broadcast their locations to friends. Facebook made the service optional, meaning that it is active only if users turn it on. If they do, they have control over who can see locations and whether to disclose the exact coordinates or just the neighborhood.

Giving users more privacy by default is unusual for Facebook, which more typically pushes the envelope by automatically exposing users' information to more people and giving them a way to opt out. The company's new Messenger app, for example, shares a user's location with friends unless it is explicitly turned off.

Some analysts said the opt-in for Nearby Friends and the new system for social log-ins suggest Facebook may be starting to take privacy more seriously.

'Facebook has been beaten up over time over their privacy issues, and they are taking steps to address it,' said Brian Blau, an analyst at the research company Gartner. 'This is going to put developers on notice that they have to be respectful of user data.'

When Google began offering its social log-in service through its Google Plus social network about a year ago, it went out of its way to limit what developers could do with the information and took extra steps to warn users in red lettering when the app wanted access to their contact lists.

'The most important guiding principle is that you can't surprise users,' said Seth Sternberg, director of product platform for Google Plus.

Facebook spent the better part of two years testing different designs for its new social log-in - what words to use to explain the type of information people are sharing and what data they had to share with all apps - before finally settling on the current line-by-line controls that Mr. Zuckerberg announced to developers.

A key principle in the new setup is that an app should ask for personal information only when it is necessary and then explain how sharing will help the person doing it.

That will appeal to users, but is likely to upset many developers.

'One of the things that a technology company feels is valuable is to have this account information,' said Mr. Blau, the Gartner analyst.

The anonymous button would take things even further.

'People would be able to log in to use or try apps without sharing information,' said Eddie O'Neil, the product manager for Facebook log-in. All that the app maker would get is an identification number and a special email address that forwards messages to the user.

For app makers, forgoing all personal information is 'a big risk,' said Andrew Maltin, the chief executive of Hang With, a video streaming app that is one of the first companies to try the anonymous log-in feature. 'We may lose some of our people who would typically give us everything.'

But Mr. Maltin said it's worth the gamble: About 21 percent of the people who download Hang With give up when they hit the account registration screen, and he thinks anonymity will win them over.

After they have used the app for a while, Hang With will ask users for more. 'It becomes our responsibility to show a user that we're trustworthy,' Mr. Maltin said.

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