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Facebook Denies Accessing Users' Text Messages

Posted by samzenpus on from the it-was-the-other-guys dept.

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."

7 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Why are people surprised? by mr1911 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Facebook is a free service. Facebook users and their data are the commodity being sold to advertisers. The business model isn't a secret.

    There are two ways to grow revenue with this model. 1) Sign up more users. 2) Invade deeper into the user data so the data sold to advertisers is more relevant and worth more.

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    1. Re:Why are people surprised? by Culture20 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      People are surprised because this is a cell phone app reading data that is irrelevant to the app's function. It would be like if Google had a picture editing program that sent google a snapshot of your entire filesystem directory listings. Surprising.

    2. Re:Why are people surprised? by phrostie · · Score: 5, Funny

      But the T in Facebook Stands for Trustworthy.

      Oh wait,,,.

  2. Re:Worst? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The fact that any old app can apparently access your contacts, text messages and browser history.

  3. Why aren't the apps properly sand-boxed? by scorp1us · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think I should be able to go in and modify any app's permissions after the fact. The "accept permissions" button should only set those requested permissions as default, then I should have an app that can revoke them. Currently the app developer gets all the power because people don't know what the permissions tie to and how they actually get used/abused. Such an ability would make app authors think twice...

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  4. Re:Worst? by Enderandrew · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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  5. Re:Worst? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

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