Facebook Acknowledges It Shared User Data With Dozens of Companies (cnet.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Facebook has admitted providing dozens of tech companies with special access to user data after publicly saying it restricted such access in 2015. Facebook continued sharing information with 61 hardware and software makers after it said it discontinued the practice in May 2015, the social networking giant acknowledged in 747 pages of documents delivered to Congress late Friday. The documents were in response to hundreds of questions posed to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg by members of Congress in April.

Facebook said it granted a special "one-time" six-month extension to companies that ranged from AOL to package-delivery service United Parcel Service to dating app Hinge so they could come into compliance with the social network's new privacy policy and create their own versions of Facebook for their devices. Data shared without users' knowledge included friends' names, genders and birth dates. Facebook's documents also said it had discovered that five other companies "theoretically could have accessed limited friends' data" as a result of a beta test. Facebook said in the documents it has ended 38 of the partnerships and plans to discontinue seven more by the end of July.

Comments

What a big surprise, NOT

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anyone surprised Facebook did this? When you sign up for a free service that obviously requires lot's of money to operate.That company will find ways to sell your information as a commodity in order to stay in business. In fact you could argue this was Facebook's plan all along was to create a site to collect personal data and then sell it as a service to companies wanting it.

Re:What a big surprise, NOT

[bill_mcgonigle]

The only surprise from a civics perspective is that they risked Contempt of Congress with their CEO. But he's rich and lawyered-up and apparently Congress converted their jail to a conference room eighty years ago, so from a reality perspective it's not a surprise at all. Still, lots of people think Congress is "doing their job" by grilling the Zuck, so none of the players lose except those people who are merely placated.