Facebook already made an attempt to be a bigger part of your mobile phone usage when it introduced the failed Facebook phone. Now they are giving it another try, this time with a dialer app called Hello.
The free app was designed by the same team that created Facebook Messenger.
When a call comes in, Hello will give you information about the caller even if you don’t have the number in your phone. That only happens if the caller has shared that information with you on Facebook.
The search function will let you look for businesses or friends on Facebook and call them with a tap. If you’re searching for business, the Hello app can find their Facebook page, get you directions and call them for you.
You can also use the app to block calls.
Now to do all of this, the app does need to be able to read and modify your contacts. It also uses location services. You can read the full list of permissions before downloading Hello from the Google Play Store.
~ Cynthia
I will not use this app. In fact, I uninstalled Facebook from my phone the minute I learned that they were accessing my contacts. My contacts are not on my computer or my tablet so I only access Facebook from them. When I removed Facebook from my phone, I deleted the contacts from my Facebook account. They may have copied the contacts on my phone from the brief period before I deleted them, but no new contacts are available to Facebook to my knowledge.
If Facebook is still able to access my contacts, please let me know. Frankly, I feel people post way too much personal information on FB and some day it may come back to haunt them.
No way am I putting more information into FB’s already massive amount of data. I must agree with Mr Komes comment that people put way too much info on FB, often without realizing the potential for misuse.