As Facebook sought to become the world’s dominant social media service, it struck agreements allowing phone and other device makers access to vast amounts of its users’ personal information.
Facebook has reached data-sharing partnerships with at least 60 device makers — including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung — over the last decade, starting before Facebook apps were widely available on smartphones, company officials said. The deals allowed Facebook to expand its reach and let device makers offer customers popular features of the social network, such as messaging, “like” buttons and address books.
But the partnerships, whose scope has not previously been reported, raise concerns about the company’s privacy protections and compliance with a 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission. Facebook allowed the device companies access to the data of users’ friends without their explicit consent, even after declaring that it would no longer share such information with outsiders. Some device makers could retrieve personal information even from users’ friends who believed they had barred any sharing, The New York Times found. […]
“It’s like having door locks installed, only to find out that the locksmith also gave keys to all of his friends so they can come in and rifle through your stuff without having to ask you for permission,” said Ashkan Soltani, a research and privacy consultant who formerly served as the F.T.C.’s chief technologist. [… ]
Immediately after the reporter connected the device to his Facebook account, it requested some of his profile data, including user ID, name, picture, “about” information, location, email and cellphone number. The device then retrieved the reporter’s private messages and the responses to them, along with the name and user ID of each person with whom he was communicating.
The data flowed to a BlackBerry app known as the Hub, which was designed to let BlackBerry users view all of their messages and social media accounts in one place.
Fake news? Facebook denies…
Privacy is a freedom. Social media twats who willingly give it up deserve to be spied on.
This was obvious when FB came preinstalled on most of these devices, and you were unable to delete the damned thing, only ‘disable’ it on most of the phone manufacturers. They had to be getting something.
And Facebook is the CIA’s biggest data mining operation. And if you don’t believe that, you haven’t been following the play. It has been confirmed from quite a number of sources. By the way, aren’t CIA operations supposed to be limited to foreign nations by mandate?
Economics 101
Corporations are in business to make money from the product they market.
So the question to the free lunch crowd in high dudgeon over their private info being sold is;
What exactly did you think Facebook was making money on?
It is odd how our SJW’s paranoia about everything capitalist never extends to FB or to Google; probably because FB and Google play the ‘knight in shining armour’ ready to take down the status quo.
once again, when fakebook started to really take off, something (from decades prior in IT) smelled a rat. a rotted fish. a gangrenous festering digital chancre was being created and to stay the FCUK away from it.
probably had something to do with spotting the old familiar herd mentality on display.
same reason I’ve NEVER been stung by a ponzi scheme, sucked into a cult, lost huge sums on a ‘sure thing’, etc etc.
tq dear hyper literal analytical autism driven instincts.
Can you say “Big Brother”
but now I guess it is: big-thin-tall-short brother-sister-brosis-sisbro-neuter
perhaps just supreme comrade
or Justin’s fav: Dear Leader