Ever blithely submitted your digits to one of those “OMGGGG My Dog Chewed up My cell & i lost all my phone numbers!!!!” groups on Facebook? Well, sorry to say it, but your number is probably floating out there in the all-consuming ether that is the Internet.
Evil, a new app designed by Tom Scott, of Tweleted, Stupid Fight and Tweet Trumps fame, aims to prove just that — that users are unwittingly sharing their personal info on the web. The program is pretty simple: Just visit the website, and you’ll be privy to a list of six constantly changing Facebookers whose numbers are out there for all to see. Scott has censored the last four digits of said users’ digits, because, as he says in the site’s Q&A: “It’s called Evil, not diabolic.”
How does the site work? According to the Q&A, “Evil uses the graph API to search for groups about lost phones. It picks them at random, extracts some of the phone numbers, and then [displays] them.” So, basically, it’s not hacking into Facebook or anything like that, merely revealing info that’s already out there.
Amidst all the upheaval around Facebook’s privacy issues, this little tool — along with many others that are seeking to help users see what private info they’re making public — is certainly an eye-opener. It really highlights how frequently we willingly give our personal info to unreliable sources without even being conscious of who has access to it. Scott suggests that if you have ever submitted your info to one of these lost phone number groups — which are often “public” or “visible to everyone” — you should delete your digits now.
Scott says the inspiration for the app came after “a friend of mine found that her number appeared in a Google search, in one of those groups… and then the whole idea appeared, fully-formed, in my head. When something like that happens… I have to build it!”
In an e-mail to Mashable, Scott wondered whether he had gone too far this time in creating Evil. What do you think? Is this app harmful or helpful in protecting your privacy?
Check out this video of how it works below:
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Tags: evil, facebook, privacy, twitter