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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.
No need to be freak outing. Just grant access for Facebook. Nothing could go wrong.
The Facebook
Is Your Friend
Trust The Facebook
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
#deletefacebook
Literally. Just remove that shit from your phone already! Then go out and do something more constructive with your life, rather than lazily scrolling through other people's "The best ..." life moments.
It's really no big deal. What other data could they possibly collect that they don't have already? They have your location at every second of the day. They have all of your contacts. They have all of your emails and text messages. What else could they get that they don't have, already?
I don't respond to AC's.
I'm most surprised that someone with enough technical merit to root their phone, would install the FB app to begin with.
Hey Facebook.
Make one app. That has messenger in it. With a bunch of options of what I want it to do (run all the time for messenger, read my photos, etc.).
Try and not make it an app that literally sucks up all my storage just browsing (my gf filled her phone up twice to the brim, when we looked it was all data stored in the Facebook app - removed the app, reinstalled, all was fine again)
Then, maybe, just maybe, I'll consider installing it. But JUST that. Nothing else. No other apps to do the same thing. And, no, you really don't require (or will ever get) one percent of the permissions your current apps demand.
To be honest, the fact that you DELIBERATELY break the Facebook mobile website to remove messenger (when "View as Desktop Site" shows it perfectly well but in a not-nice format) pisses me off more than anything. You are literally trying to force me to use the apps and I have no interest in that.
You know what happens when you try to force people to use products/services they have no interest in? They go elsewhere.
Another 5 years and Facebook will be like MySpace is now.
Leave Facebook. You'll feel a lot better.
Apparently, Facebook are now saying that the message is clearly a bug. It was meant to say:
"Do you want to continue to be anally raped by a multi-billion spying operation run by a dwarf with no moral compass?{Y/n]"
For those with a room temperature IQ (in celsius) you want to hit "Yes". Everybody else wants to hit "No".
The Machine stops.
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.
The problem is, in the case of Facebook (and Twitter), there is no "elsewhere" to go to. Seriously, go to what?
Go outside ?
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. :)