A storm of criticism evoked by Facebook’s decision to share its user’s addresses and mobile numbers with third party developers last Friday has prompted the social networking site to put its controversial plans on hold.

Ostensibly the move had been made to streamline the checkout process for e-commerce sites but security analysts had warned that the changes could expose user’s personal information to spammers and that such sensitive information should be accompanied by more stringent warnings.

Belatedly, Facebook now agrees, disabling the extra requests for permission pending a series of urgent “updates” to be conducted over the next few weeks.

In a statement Facebook said: “Over the weekend, we got some useful feedback that we could make people more clearly aware of when they are granting access to this data. We agree, and we are making changes to help ensure you only share this information when you intend to do so.”

The saga nevertheless raises questions as to how an organisation, which ought to have been sensitive to privacy concerns following previous controversies, could have launched such an unheralded change, on a Friday evening, without fully thinking through the consequences.