Facebook Provided Phone Makers 'Deep Access' to User Data
Brace yourselves, Facebook users: some other privacy scandal may be afoot.
A Sunday report from The New York Times reveals that the social network offered Apple, Samsung, and dozens of other device makers "access to vast amounts of its users' personal information," including, in some cases, the information of users' friends who "believed they had barred any sharing."
The data sharing reportedly occurred years ago, "earlier Facebook apps were widely available on smartphones," allowing the device makers—at least threescore in total, also including Amazon, BlackBerry, and Microsoft—to "offer customers pop features of the social network, such equally messaging, 'like' buttons, and accost books" on their gadgets.
The Times says "most" of those partnerships at all the same in effect, though Facebook started "winding them downwardly in April" in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Apple tells the Times its access to the data ended in September; Amazon and Samsung declined to comment.
The do may have violated Facebook's 2022 understanding with the Federal Merchandise Commission to be more than transparent about its privacy policies, the report notes.
In a Sunday weblog mail service, Facebook defended the practice. The visitor said it launched the software in question a decade agone—earlier app stores were really a matter—to "help become Facebook onto mobile devices."
At the time, "we built a set of device-integrated APIs that allowed companies to recreate Facebook-like experiences for their individual devices or operating systems," Facebook Vice President of Product Partnerships Ime Archibong explained. "Given that these APIs enabled other companies to recreate the Facebook experience, we controlled them tightly from the get-go. These partners signed agreements that prevented people's Facebook data from being used for any other purpose than to recreate Facebook-like experiences."
Archibong went on to say that Facebook is "not enlightened of any abuse past these companies."
The Times specifically takes issue with Facebook's practice of letting these device partners "override sharing restrictions." The newspaper found that those partners can "obtain data about a user's Facebook friends, fifty-fifty those who take denied Facebook permission to share information with any third parties."
I privacy expert the Times spoke to likened it to "having door locks installed, only to detect out that the locksmith also gave keys to all of his friends."
From the impact of fake news on the 2022 presidential election to its Cambridge Belittling scandal, Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg have a habit of initially downplaying issues that come to light and later apologizing. Almost recently, he denied that Facebook has a monopoly problem during a contentious appearance before European regulators.
About Angela Moscaritolo
Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/news/21385/facebook-provided-phone-makers-deep-access-to-user-data
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