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Facebook Acknowledges It Has Been Keeping Records of Android Users' Calls, Texts (slate.com)
Last week, a user found that Facebook had a record of the date, time, duration, and recipient of calls he had made from the past few years. A couple days later, Ars Technica published an account of several others -- all Android users -- who found similar records. Now, Slate Magazine is reporting that Facebook has acknowledged that it was collecting and storing these logs, "attributing it to an opt-in feature for those using Messenger or Facebook Lite on an Android device." The company did however deny that it was collecting call or text history without a user's permission. From the report: "This helps you find and stay connected with the people you care about, and provides you with a better experience across Facebook," the company said in a post Sunday. "People have to expressly agree to use this feature. We introduced this feature for Android users a couple of years ago. Contact importers are fairly common among social apps and services as a way to more easily find the people you want to connect with."
Ars Technica refuted their claim that everyone knowingly opted in. Instead, Ars Technica's Sean Gallagher claimed, that opt-in was the default setting and users were not separately alerted to it. Nor did Facebook ever say publicly that it was collecting that information. "Facebook says that the company keeps the data secure and does not sell it to third parties," Gallagher wrote. "But the post doesn't address why it would be necessary to retain not just the numbers of contacts from phone calls and SMS messages, but the date, time, and length of those calls for years."
Ars Technica refuted their claim that everyone knowingly opted in. Instead, Ars Technica's Sean Gallagher claimed, that opt-in was the default setting and users were not separately alerted to it. Nor did Facebook ever say publicly that it was collecting that information. "Facebook says that the company keeps the data secure and does not sell it to third parties," Gallagher wrote. "But the post doesn't address why it would be necessary to retain not just the numbers of contacts from phone calls and SMS messages, but the date, time, and length of those calls for years."
These companies every piece of information about you that they can. That's their business model. How can anyone be surprised at things like this?
When a company, like Facebook, is in an argument with its users, that the users DID know something, in other words, that the users were wrong, its gotten bad. When a company that seems to basically own their users, as they catalog their users every thought and action, concessions about them being respectful and honest about privacy are important. Not only does it look like Facebook own their users, they are telling them to check themselves.
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"Without Galileo, we wouldn't have gone to the moon" - NASA Scientist
and this is partially why, along with raping my battery.
Can't tell me wanting to collect this data isn't part of why they try to strong-arm you into using their apps by intentionally cutting down on what they'll allow you to do with a mobile browser.
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never trusted social media.
If they had to, PRISM should have been the point to stop and remove all accounts.
Now years later again the reality of what social media as an ad company and a gov helper can do is understood.
Find a better way to be online that does not have your data kept by a big band for years.
Keep your data safe from US party politics and big brand censorship.
Just say no to social media.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
A "default opt-in" is known as an "opt-out" to everyone but shills (or marketing, more or less the same thing).
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
I had it for about 6 months in 2011, before tracking battery drain to it. I think it has probably improved since then, but I got used to checking facebook via the web page on my own terms, rather than getting spammed with notifications all day. Then I noticed them trying to push me back to the app, first by taking Messaging away from the mobile web interface, and more recently by popping up messages about my friends posting time-limited stories that you need the app to view. When they started that tactic, I took it as a sign that the app was doing something nefarious, so it just made me more determined to avoid it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
that people, knowing just how bad this and similar companies are, continue to use the products. You are the product when you use Facebook, et al. Unless you are paying for a service, you are the product. I have never has a social media account and never will. I saw the writing on the wall even before they became the behemoths they are today. As a long time IT security practitioner, I'm staggered that when year after year of these "revelations", no one begs off. No one is suddenly awakened. I happily pay for my own services and roll my own for more security-related needs. Anyone with a modicum of common sense will avoid these privacy-killing services.
Now, having said all this, I'll likely be flamed for whatever reasons, but that's OK. I've seen and heard enough to know I'm in the right. I never understood why people knowingly flock to services that are going to fleece them with regards to privacy.
F'book Messaging works fine in Opera for Android, or if you change your UserAgent string to pretend to be Opera.
Got a new phone... cant uninstall FB bloat... WTF. Rooting a phone should not validate the warranty...
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To their demise.... Its shouldn't take long.
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But Facebook doesn't just track the idiots, it tracks everybody those idiots interract with whether they are a Facebook user or not. That is exactly what the government needs to crack down on and crack down hard.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
It works fine in Chrome too if you enable the "Desktop site" setting.
And have a feature freeze.
Someone with some $$$ and morals can rather easily take down FB by siphoning the user base.
These are written by gobs of lawyers over a long time span with much thought, and you are supposed to breeze thru these in seconds and accept?
"...a better experience across Facebook" ???
These are records the Stasi would get wet dreams over. The fact it is obviously obscured shows nefarious intent.
Dump and erase anything Facebook. These people are evil.
The thief (Facebook) came in through the open door (Android's zero privacy policy).
But is it really wrong to grab all private information from an Android owner? To use any Google product is to automatically forfeit any rights to privacy.
I never downloaded, installed, and used its app!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The Lord doesn't have a cellphone, he sold it so he could buy food for the filthy hippies living on the beach.
But I know you're full of shit, because once the App is disabled it doesn't run at all, and can't send you notifications.
Why would you have ever run the Facebook app for them to have recorded a login for you to it?
and realize they aren't the customer of companies like this... they are the product.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
Disputed, not refuted. Refuted means to prove wrong. It is a very useful and specific word. Why dilute it just to sound "fancy" when there already is a word that means *exactly* what is intended?
Surely it's noteworthy that FB was only able to behave this badly on the Android platform. Whether it was for technical or policy reasons, it wasn't possible on iOS.
become part of the herd
I don't wan't vulgar posts from my crazy niece to appear on the screen of my work device
Why are you logged in to your personal FB on your work device?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Because some employers are OK with that. Because carrying two or more phones is generally a stupid idea. Because he can.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
As I found out Facebook even transmitted texts I entered to recipients in my so-called âoegroupâ.
I've never had a facebook account, never will. Never installed the facebook app on my phone.
No one should be surprised by these revelations. It's facebook's model, it's how they sell ads, it's how they make money.
I have ZERO percent confidence that "deleting" your FB account will really do anything. They probably just change your password so you can't login, and thus think your account is gone. But all your info is still for sale.
So what if all your friends and distant relatives are on facebook. If you care about your privacy, delete your account (just because), remove the app(s) from your phone, and stop using facebook. If their numbers go down, advertisers will go somewhere else, and facebook will go the way of myspace. Yes it's convenient, if that means everything to you, then don't bitch about what they do with your data or their EULA. There are others ways to communicate and collaborate. Pick up the phone and call someone, if it's that important.
Doesn't it only have the ability to do this for the people that gave it permission to access SMS on their device? Seems kind of click-baity.
WIthout root, you can still remove builtin apps.
http://www.lmfgtfy.com/?q=remo...
Cheap storage VM.
I never downloaded, installed, and used its app!
Lucky guy. These days it is inextricably bundled with the OS, and it is impossible to completely uninstall.
You obviously don't have the app in a Samsung S device. You can't disable it, unless you buy a third party tool to disable the services, and if you do that, several other things break on your Samsung device.
I have somewhat of a similar story, but it gets me to wondering whether the time when I did have the app was in the wild west of Android permissions that the articles are talking about.
Opt in by default" is bullcrap IMO. If it's an option that is, by any subset of the citizen's consensus - potentially damaging or privacy depriving - then "Opt in by default" equates to "We hope you don't notice, because sure as hell you'd say NO!" If it really was an opt-in by default situation, with no very visible indicator of same, then I'd have to guess this could be considered law breaking in cases where European users are concerned.
I waited a long time to get my first mobile phone. The first thing I looked for was a security click-box on my address book "just tell every app. that tries to access this to fuck off" unless I tell Android at the system level otherwise (there would be no possible way for the application to prompt for or request this change).
404.
My relationship with Android started off sketchy, and only went downhill from there.
I did eventually find a way: install no apps at all.
So now it's just a shiny phone with a Google keyboard and a Chrome browser and that suffices. When Chrome is not open, the WiFi and data modem are always disabled.
Almost a security model that makes sense.
Also, I enjoy saving the $5/month for not having even a pittance of a data connection, because it drives my telco's billing department absolutely mad. Some machine learning algorithm is busy tying its nickers into a knot trying to invite into a higher revenue-bracket future. Somewhere out there, there's a Telus middle manager crying giant tears onto his monthly "conversion" report because of me.
With a security model I could tolerate, I'd probably have dozens of apps and full-time data service.
Android fail.
Using a web browser from one ad company to navigate a system hosted within a social-network ad company. Really, what else can you do incorrectly?
It also works in the Last Pass browser - which is basically a customized Firefox for Android.
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So where are the class action lawsuits against the ass-hat companies that MADE you have Facebook on your Android phone. Some phones even prevent you from uninstalling/disabling it. I'm looking at you every phone manufacturer and service provider ever.
"This helps you find and stay connected with the people you care about.."
Really. People need Facebook to keep track of people they care about?
Depends on the phone/tablet. I have an HTC phone and a Verizon Ellipsis tablet, and neither of them has Facebook on it
Besides, even if Facebook is there, unless one logs in, or has in the Account settings the same email address as the one used in the Facebook account, why would that matter in the first place?
The demos at staples were fake plastic cutouts. :(
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