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Facebook Is Changing the Way It Stores Call, Text History

Posted by BeauHD on from the cause-and-effect dept.

Facebook issued a blog post today detailing the changes it has made to how it manages users' data. Among the new changes is a tweak to how Facebook collects and stores call and text history. Engadget reports: For those using Messenger or Facebook Lite on Android, an opt-in feature compiles users' call and text history, which the company says is used to help it surface the contacts you talk to most frequently. In its blog post today, Facebook said that it has reviewed the feature and can confirm that it doesn't actually collect the content of any messages. Additionally, going forward, it will delete logs older than a year and only the data required for the feature's functionality will be collected, meaning no extra data, such as call times, will be stored. The collection of such data became an issue last month, when software developer Dylan McKay discovered the logs after downloading a copy of his account data. Facebook initially said that it was an opt-in feature. It also said that the call and text history data were never sold. You can see how to turn off this feature here for Messenger and here for Facebook Lite.

55 comments

  1. If Zuckie says so ... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 4, Funny

    If Zuckie says so, we should all believe him. Yep. He's totally trustworthy.

    1. Re:If Zuckie says so ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I don't really get it. This has never been an issue for me. I saw the permissions it was requesting and denied them. Did 99.999999% rest of the world just blindly allow it? Why?

    2. Re:If Zuckie says so ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That you were able to deny the permissions is beside the point. They shouldn't be requesting them in the first place.

    3. Re:If Zuckie says so ... by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 3, Insightful

      More importantly, it's very likely that even if you deny Facebook the right to do something it wants to do, it'll do it anyway. There's no way to tell, why wouldn't they?

      The permissions thing is just a dog-and-pony show...

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    4. Re:If Zuckie says so ... by rogoshen1 · · Score: 0

      Totally checks out Mr. Dude.

    5. Re:If Zuckie says so ... by rogoshen1 · · Score: 0

      growl, thanks slashdot! you ate text inside of lt / gt symbols.
      insert "jennifer_lawrence_meme.gif" =/

    6. Re:If Zuckie says so ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It actually was done without your consent, via people who know you in some way; whether you use the service or not. They tagged you, or had you in their phone book: You are in the system.

      You are in their data set whether or not you agreed to the terms and service agreement.

      The best option is a class action lawsuit to force them to delete and not retain your info. The alternative was just in the news at another company...

    7. Re:If Zuckie says so ... by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The best option is a class action lawsuit to force them to delete and not retain your info.

      Okay. Say they get sued and they lose the class action (fat chance). How can you tell they'll actually delete the data?

      Facebook's infrastructure is vast. Technically, it'd take experts months to ensure they actually comply with the judge's order - and that's assuming FB doesn't actively try to deceive them. What would most likely happen is, FB would simply promise to comply in writing, and we all know what FB's promises are worth...

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    8. Re:If Zuckie says so ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Regulation: with noncompliance penalties, Unilateral halt of service until compliance (no Facebook for anyone until the order is observed), and asset forfeiture for non compliance. : You probably can't stop the information from being on the Internet, but its time to start demonetizing user abuse. Or in this case, literally non user abuse.

      The easiest way to do that is to harness the greed and arrogance of legislators: "If they won't maybe we will find someone who will : after we shut them down..."

      Call it a privacy tax and use extreme prejudice toward third party involvement.

    9. Re:If Zuckie says so ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. They're letting the NSA handle the info instead.

    10. Re:If Zuckie says so ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      growl, thanks slashdot! you ate text inside of lt / gt symbols.
      insert "jennifer_lawrence_meme.gif" =/

      You "thank" Slashdot for your own inability to figure out what the Preview button is for. You're a dumb cunt and like every other dumb cunt, you blame others for things you could easily have prevented.

    11. Re:If Zuckie says so ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That you were able to deny the permissions is beside the point. They shouldn't be requesting them in the first place.

      ... which is a perfectly sound reason not to allow anything from them at all, ever. They insist on making it an all-or-nothing deal? Great. The correct answer is "nothing" then. Oh, most people answered "all" anyway, despite how irrational this is?

      What you're actually discovering is that the majority of people are mindless sheep. That is the root of the problem. It's not as though the downsides of interacting with Facebook are unknown and yet to be discovered. You can observe a similar pattern in anything political. As Edward Bernays observed, it's downright easy to get people to vote against their own interests. It doesn't matter if voting means "with their feet", "with their wallets", or "at the polls". It doesn't matter at all.

    12. Re: If Zuckie says so ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      tl;dr - they're gonna store it, where we can't see it

    13. Re:If Zuckie says so ... by DrXym · · Score: 1

      I don't really get it. This has never been an issue for me. I saw the permissions it was requesting and denied them. Did 99.999999% rest of the world just blindly allow it? Why?

      You just answered your own question. Because the default response is if an app asks for a permission you grant it. Perhaps you the 0.000001% chose not to grant the permission. But the power of the default speaks.

      It's also why new Facebook users are set up with ridiculously open security settings - because Facebook knows the power of the default. It's also why Facebook and other social media sites make it a pain in the ass to change the settings. They want to hide the privacy settings in the UI where you can't find them, and/or put you off from changing them. It is all very deliberate and cynical.

      It also makes it beyond laughable and frankly obscene when Zuckerberg opines that he thought people would individually change the settings from the default rather than making the default for everybody secure in the first place.

    14. Re:If Zuckie says so ... by houghi · · Score: 1

      There are two steps.
      1) It will take experts months
      2) If they get caught, they get a huge fine

      Step 1 would mean the willingness to enforce people to actually look at EVERYTHING. Bit like when they where looking for WMDs in Iraq. You listen to the investigators, not somebody on /.Things can be traced. Especially in a company as big as FB. Somebody will not have their HD wiped with an email explaining to store it all in ROT13.

      Step 2 would require a willingness to go after a company and not just saying they did something wrong, like they told e.g. Microsoft and then did nothing.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    15. Re:If Zuckie says so ... by datavirtue · · Score: 2

      I have never met anyone who is competent enough to delete that much data. What you are suggesting is nearly impossible. Backups, backups of the backups, archives, backups of the archives, archives of the archives....all of the data duplicated many times over and entangled, derived. There is no way to unwind this shit.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    16. Re:If Zuckie says so ... by datavirtue · · Score: 1

      Months? How many serious projects have you been on? We are talking about revising every Facebook data set in existence. It is a multi-year project that would fail.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
  2. That should tell you something by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

    I mean, they had to do an honest-to-goodness review before they could determine that they weren't collecting the content of these phone and text conversations - which weren't part of Facebook at all, I might add.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:That should tell you something by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I mean, they had to do an honest-to-goodness review

      No they didn't. They had to do an honest-to-goodness fire-hosing of the flaming ignorant masses who opted to let the Facebook app become their phone and messaging system and then freaked out that it had the functionality of a phone and messaging system.

      In other news Facebook will now be the only app on my phone capable as acting a full phone dialler which doesn't also record the call times.

  3. Yeah, sure. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They are gonna call it User Experience Enhancement, publically store it for a year, then offload it to subcontractor for permanent storage.

    1. Re:Yeah, sure. by Zaelath · · Score: 2

      Not to mention, where in this explanation does it make sense that "sorting your contacts" requires a server?

      Call and Text History: Call and text history is part of an opt-in feature for people using Messenger or Facebook Lite on Android. This means we can surface the people you most frequently connect with at the top of your contact list. We’ve reviewed this feature to confirm that Facebook does not collect the content of messages — and will delete all logs older than one year. In the future, the client will only upload to our servers the information needed to offer this feature — not broader data such as the time of calls.

      Also, who uses "surface" in this way? What a wanker.

    2. Re:Yeah, sure. by HornWumpus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Cults often use private languages. Most people believe they aren't bad, so they use language to hide from what they're doing...'surface', 'expropriate' etc etc.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    3. Re:Yeah, sure. by datavirtue · · Score: 1

      That is how you identify cults, by gleaning the alternate meaning of words that everyone uses but which the adherents "know" mean something completely different when used between members.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
  4. Opt In? by suricatta · · Score: 1

    What I love is how they call what is essentially an opt-out feature opt-in.

    No Facebook. I did not want to "opt in" to that at all.

  5. How to verify that FB account actually deleted? by bogaboga · · Score: 2

    I am tired of having to "worry" about FaceBook and how it handles data. Can someone here tell me how to ascertain whether an account and associated data no longer exist?

    FB is of no use in this regard as they keep bugging fellas who "delete or deactivate" their accounts.

    1. Re:How to verify that FB account actually deleted? by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I am tired of having to "worry" about FaceBook and how it handles data.

      Me, I'm tired of having to worry about how any of my data is mishandled by Facebook - or Google, or CloudFlare, or Apple, or Microsoft, or any other big data player for that matter - when I explicitely and quite deliberately refuse to use any their "services".

      It requires real focus and total dedication to limit the amount of shit these companies know about me to an absolute minimum when I simply want to go on the internet - nevermind denying them the right to know anything at all, which is impossible. That's what's tiring in today's surveillance capitalist society.

      It's becoming so problematic that I'm increasingly turning into poisoning the well instead of trying to dry it up - i.e. supply big data with as much bullshit information as possible, since they want data that bad...

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    2. Re:How to verify that FB account actually deleted? by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Search for 'Lithium-Deuteride for sale'. What could go wrong?

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    3. Re:How to verify that FB account actually deleted? by Zaelath · · Score: 1

      http://makeinternetnoise.com/i...

    4. Re:How to verify that FB account actually deleted? by datavirtue · · Score: 1

      A few people poisoning the data stand out like a sore thumb and aid in tuning the data sets. Your efforts are fruitless and most likely serve to help them. Learn a little data science and analytics. Anomalies (in your case, purposely subverted data) can be easily detected because all of the other sheep feed them without restriction.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
  6. Only after discovery? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes.. up to and including the day somebody found out what we were doing all was well. Then someone discovered our true purpose and we'll promise to not do it any more.

    Maybe we'll take out a full page ad in printed media that nobody actually reads.. apologizing for our transgressions and hope we will be forgiven.

    Pfffffttttt...

  7. Too little, too late. by QuietLagoon · · Score: 2

    Trust is lost in seconds, and takes years to regain.

    1. Re:Too little, too late. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Trust is lost in seconds, and takes years to regain.

      Maybe on a personal level, yes. On a large scale, never underestimate how short the memory is of the American public.

    2. Re:Too little, too late. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There Never was Any trust.
      FB has always been a virus and (should have been)
      treated as such since day one.
      Dumb F**ks indeed.

  8. FB says data on most of 2B users vulnerable... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 2

    And then there's this... Facebook Says Data on Most of Its 2 Billion Users Vulnerable

  9. How about the option NOT to store by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No? Well, get fucked Zuck.

  10. How it stored call and text history? by pdms · · Score: 1

    Why is it storing this info at all?

    1. Re:How it stored call and text history? by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Selling data to make a profit.
      So an ad company can get its ads to the right person in near real time.

      The NSA.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  11. Next Investor Call... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Hey look! We're purging data now so we can delay infrastructure costs and boost our bottom line for at least two quarters despite that pesky lost revenue from our core business model being exposed."

  12. Let's translate this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "Here at Facebook we are very concerned with the amount of negative publicity we have received lately concerning our business and the impact it is having on our revenue generation scheme. Going forward, we will redouble our efforts to ensure that end users are no longer able to discern the amount of data that we collect on them routinely, as an ongoing operation, to ensure that our business model continues with as high a profitability as possible."

  13. Is anyone stupid enough to believe this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    If you had a Facebook account you're an idiot. If you still have a Facebook account you're an even bigger idiot. If you let your family run Facebook accounts you're an idiot because although they don't know any better you do.

  14. i dont care what facebook says or does by FudRucker · · Score: 1

    i will NEVER trust them with my data, i blocked all their domains with my /etc/hosts file so as far as my PC is concerned facebook does not even exist because i dont want them to access my PC either directly or though any websites with social networking links & features

    --
    Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
    1. Re:i dont care what facebook says or does by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i will NEVER trust them with my data, i blocked all their domains with my /etc/hosts file so as far as my PC is concerned facebook does not even exist

      Until your browser silently enables DNS over HTTP and bypasses your block.

    2. Re:i dont care what facebook says or does by AHuxley · · Score: 2

      The ads company will do the collecting and tracking now in real time. No messy keeping of data costs. "Privacy" is now a way to save on costs.
      The data is still flowing to the ads and nothing is lost.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    3. Re:i dont care what facebook says or does by novakyu · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Are you sure you have done a thorough enough job? Have you looked at any particular file hosted on Facebook? Do they all use *.facebook.com? If you have realized Facebook owns and uses other domains, are you sure you blocked them all?

    4. Re: i dont care what facebook says or does by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What?

  15. If they were serious... by bradley13 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If Facebook were serious, they would stop storing this data at all. Data not collected cannot be compromised.

    Of course, that goes against their business plan. So, instead, they make a lot of noise about a couple of purely cosmetic changes, and go on selling all your data to anyone who wants it.

    Cambridge Analytics? That wasn't an accident or an oversight. That was business as usual, Facebook making money. They are only annoyed that they got caught.

    --
    Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
    1. Re:If they were serious... by Shotgun · · Score: 1

      Speaking of cosmetic changes...I know someone that provides laser services (hair removal, tattoo removal, etc), and she is constantly on her phone with these client/patients. Some of these procedures fall under HIPA regulations. Would Facebook be running afoul of HIPA regulations by scraping and storing such data?

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
  16. Don't store them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And also stop scraping and storing SMS chat and other things that have nothing to do with Facebook either

  17. That's like the Pope saying by thomn8r · · Score: 1

    Priests will change the way they sodomize altar boys

  18. Facebook apps on your phone is utter folly by millertym · · Score: 1

    It may be worth it to keep Facebook around to stay in touch with more distant contacts easily and to be a part of how much of the world works these days with people organizing and planning things - but even so we know it collects insane amounts of data from every nook and cranny it can leach from. Maybe some of us can live with that while accessed from a desktop sitting in a static location, without mics or cameras hooked up for it to have access to.

    But on your cell phone? Do that an you are basically surveilling yourself every moment of your day - as opposed to just while using desktop - to large corp that will sell and exploit that data as part of their business plan.

    1. Re:Facebook apps on your phone is utter folly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ran it in a portable browser on win pe in a virtual machine and got ads meant for deaf people.

  19. Simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just get rid of anything associated with facebook on any device you might own.

  20. how to hack by kourtneybutts00 · · Score: 1

    This man assisted me in hacking my CHEATING HUSBAND Facebook account and he is a very good hacker for services like :WhatsApp, call logs, test messages etc. He delivers in 2hrs or less you can contact him via: Email: E N R I Q U E H A C K D E M O N 11 ( a t ) G M A I L d o t C O M. WhatsApp: + 1 ( 6 2 8 ) 2 0 3 - 7 0 0 5 Text/Call: + 1 ( 4 0 9 ) 9 9 9 - 3 4 7 7 .