Facebook Denies Accessing Users' Text Messages

quantr writes "Facebook is being accused of snooping on its users' text messages, but the social network says the accusations are inaccurate and misleading. The company is among a wide-ranging group of Web entities, including Flickr and YouTube, that are using smartphone apps to access text message data and other personal information, according to a Sunday Times report (behind a paywall). The newspaper said Facebook 'admitted' to reading users' text messages during a test of its own messaging service. The report also says information such as user location, contacts list, and browser history are often accessed and sometimes transmitted to third-party companies, including advertisers."

Comments

Worst?

[SJHillman]

What's worse? The the fact that they have to deny these kind of accusations or the fact that they're probably lying?

Re:Worst?

[Enderandrew]

With iOS, apps just simply have access to this data by default. With Android, for each app you have to specifically grant access to these things while installing the app.

Re:Worst?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many smartphones come with facebook pre-installed. I had to root my phone to uninstall it.

Re:Worst?

[Calos]

Look for:
LBE Privacy Guard
Permissions Denied

Re:is that allowed on mobile APIs?

[Enderandrew]

Android doesn't do this. Certain carriers push out custom versions of Android where a small handful of the shovel-ware apps can't be deleted. But Facebook and Twitter can be deleted on all the major carriers (Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon).

However, you can always root your phone if you really want to delete these shovel-ware apps.

Re:is that allowed on mobile APIs?

[wannabgeek]

Google's stock Android doesn't let you uninstall Facebook, Twitter, Amazon MP3 and even Google Books. I'm talking Ginger Bread on Nexus One - so it's not imposed by any carrier. It gets into some weird situations as well - since I'm in India and currently Google Books is not available for India, it won't let me install any updates, but it still shows me update notifications, and would not let me uninstall the app. It sucks, especially since app storage is really small and precious on these old phones.