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Facebook's Android App Is Asking for Superuser Privileges, Users Say (bleepingcomputer.com)
Catalin Cimpanu, reporting for BleepingComputer: The Facebook Android app is asking for superuser permissions, and a bunch of users are freaking out about granting the Facebook app full access to their device, an understandable reaction following the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal. "Grants full access to your device," read the prompts while asking users for superuser permissions. These popups originate from the official Facebook Android app (com.facebook.katana) and are started appearing last night [UTC timezone], continuing throughout the day. Panicked users took to social media, Reddit, and Android-themed forums to share screengrabs of these suspicious popups and ask for advice on what's going on.
Facebook users have already granted Facebook access to their life, and even parts of the lives of people around who are trying to stay out of its clutches, to boot. There is very little Facebook does not collect about you.
Why the crocodile tears when Facebook users are the ones who have voted in surveillance clusterfuck?
I'm most surprised that someone with enough technical merit to root their phone, would install the FB app to begin with.
Leave Facebook. You'll feel a lot better.
1. Facebook is busted for some privacy violation users glossed over in the terms of service but are now outraged about.
2. Facebook admits its doing the thing it said it would, but that everything is working to help users.
3. some nameless third party chimes in and accidentally shows the meat counter to the cattle.
4. Facebook walks back its original statement, revises its terms to explicitly refuse service to the third party that outed it, and everyones fine.
The only winning move is not to play. Just delete the god damn app already and leave facebook. Absolutely none of it is for your direct benefit. A multinational megacorporation has found a way to turn your friends into a carrot you'll follow into a slaughterhouse that carves up your personal information and sells it to the real customers.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The fact that the shitty FB app is preinstalled on many android devices (and cannot be removet without root) is far worse.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
Say no and uninstall it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The good su apps on Android will not, by default, allow a program to present a su dialog unless the app manifest in the Google Play Store has ACCESS_SUPERUSER declared.
What bothers me is that this is something that has to be explicitly coded. Why would an app -ever- request this by accident, is beyond me.
Funny, I practically had the opposite reaction:
No need to freak out, just say "hell no", and when their mobile usage drops close to 0, it's FaceBook that will freak out...
It already dropped dramatically with the #deletefacebook movement, right ? Right ?
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
What's going on is that the user that found this has rooted his phone and noticed that the FB app requested for privilege escalation. An Android user who hasn't rooted his phone will not see such a request (from any app) since they don't have root to begin with. This is either a bug in the code that triggered privileged escalation, OR it is intentional. You pick. :)
IIRC my stock ROM on my last phone had facebook installed as an unremovable app. Depending on the phone's bootloader situation that could mean some folks CAN'T remove spywarebook. (Or their manufacturer's homebrewed spyware either)
Facebook needs the following permissions:
The masses: "Eh... odd, but I really need to check Facebook." [OK]
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.