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Facebook Has Asked Large US Banks To Share Detailed Financial Information About Customers as it Seeks To Boost User Engagement [Update] (wsj.com)
Facebook wants your financial data. The social media giant has asked large U.S. banks to share detailed financial information about their customers, including card transactions and checking account balances, as part of an effort to offer new services to users, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. From the report: Facebook increasingly wants to be a platform where people buy and sell goods and services, besides connecting with friends. The company over the past year asked JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup and U.S. Bancorp USB to discuss potential offerings it could host for bank customers on Facebook Messenger, said people familiar with the matter. Facebook has talked about a feature that would show its users their checking-account balances, the people said. It has also pitched fraud alerts, some of the people said. Data privacy is a sticking point in the banks' conversations with Facebook, according to people familiar with the matter. The talks are taking place as Facebook faces several investigations over its ties to political analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, which accessed data on as many 87 million Facebook users without their consent. Update: Shares of Facebook surged nearly 3% following the report. A paywall free, alternative source of this story.
Update 2 (18:10 GMT): Talking to TechCrunch, Facebook has, in part, denied WSJ's report. TechCrunch: Facebook spokesperson Elisabeth Diana tells TechCrunch it's not asking for credit card transaction data from banks and it's not interested in building a dedicated banking feature where you could interact with your accounts. It also says its work with banks isn't to gather data to power ad targeting, or even personalize content such as what Marketplace products you see based on what you buy elsewhere.
Update 2 (18:10 GMT): Talking to TechCrunch, Facebook has, in part, denied WSJ's report. TechCrunch: Facebook spokesperson Elisabeth Diana tells TechCrunch it's not asking for credit card transaction data from banks and it's not interested in building a dedicated banking feature where you could interact with your accounts. It also says its work with banks isn't to gather data to power ad targeting, or even personalize content such as what Marketplace products you see based on what you buy elsewhere.
Seems like a good way for fraud to happen or for debt collectors to bully your Facebook friends.
Silly fees for not using my accounts enough (really, silly fees, in general) and giving away or inappropriately using my transaction data are the two top reasons I will leave a bank. Data privacy for financial institutions is critical for continued trust in that industry.
--I like turtles...
So I can be sure to take my business elsewhere.
You can be sure that they are still collecting data about you. FB, like Google is impossible to avoid.
-- Cheers!
Several years ago, I discovered that Facebook cookies were being set on my PC whenever I logged-in to my accounts at the credit unions (2) and bank (1) where I have accounts. I was surprised since I do not have a Facebook account and do not want one.
I then found that practice was contrary to the published privacy policies of all three financial institutions. I sent postal letters to all three. Two of them changed their Web site such that no Facebook cookies were being set.
After a repeated letter to the third institution resulted in no correction in 6 months, I wrote to the institution's federal regulatory agency requesting an enforcement action to make the institution comply with their own privacy policy. Now, none of the three Web sites set Facebook cookies.
"I've got a great idea guys, the Stasi, but on the internet!"
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This is breaking news and a WSJ scoop. When the story hit Slashdot, nobody else had a rewrite. So they had little to no choice to link back to someone else. Besides, Slashdot readers know how to bypass a paywall. I mean, c'mon.
..."Privacy Rapists" - seems more accurate as the days go by.
AC comments get piped to
How the hell is it even remotely legal for banks to "share" that sort of very personal and private data with anyone outside government regulatory and law enforcement agencies, especially without your express written permission? What the actual fuck!?!?
[HeavyRussianAccent]
"Hello, yes, I from Facebook am, please to give me all your transaction data."
[/HeavyRussianAccent]
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
This makes me even happier that I ditched Facebook 9 months ago never to return.
Only 9 months ago? Pfttt! I quit Facebook well before it was the 'cool' thing to do.
AC comments get piped to
This makes me even happier that I ditched Facebook 9 months ago never to return.
Only 9 months ago? Pfttt! I quit Facebook well before it was the 'cool' thing to do.
I never joined. Saw it for what it was right from the start. Samething with Twitter and all the rest of "Social Media".
What are you talking about? You can't just "ditch" facebook. They just disable your login. Your profile and data is still there, and more is linked to it every day.
Update: Shares of Facebook surged nearly 3% following the report. A paywall free, alternative source of this story.
Wait a minute...
Shares of Facebook surged nearly 3% following the report.
WTF is wrong with people?????
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Real benefit for FB -- they will be able to reliably tie accounts to a real identity. Fecebook will off-load their ID verification onto banks by tying accounts to a bank account/routing number and verifying via two ACH deposits/withdrawls of random quantity (same as PayPal does). This is of course not a benefit for their customers, but it benefits Zuck&Co in being able to track and throw ads at real people more reliably.
Investors often don't give a single shit how moral/ethical/just plain evil a company's plan is as long as it is legal. Remember, the almighty dollars rules many at the top. I personally avoid investments in any of the companies engaging in such activities, but I am by far in the minority...
but FUCK NO. Any bank that allows or sells access to any portion of my banking accounts should get sued into oblivion. The only people that need my account balance are the bank and myself.
Anyone else is a violation of privacy and, I believe, several Federal banking regulations as well. If I need to prove my banking information (say, mortgage or other large loan), then sure -- but only because _I_ approved the bank to share that information. Under no other circumstance should any of my bank balances be shared with anyone.
Holy fuck, I think we need a reset in this country and "the people" need to take back control -- not the corporations.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
It's clear what Facebook is doing: they're trying to establish themselves as the Tencent WeChat of the United States, the one-stop portal that messaging, mobile commerce, electronic payments, and just about everything else runs through. However, they won't be able to pull it off in the United States for several reasons. One is that in China, the banking infrastructure is weaker, so before they had a chance to step-in, WeChat basically established themselves as the gatekeeper. In the United States at least, banks have already seen what happened with credit cards (MC/Visa monopoly) and are trying to prevent that from happening again with electronic payments. They'll talk, but they're certainly not going to hand this over to a company like Facebook.
Stepping back, this of course was all pre-Facebook data scandals. Now, with general public trust in Facebook weakening, people are probably going to be even less inclined to support a Facebook-based system.
To quote the summary,
Which sounds to me that Facebook hopes to compete with Google and Amazon in being a market.
I wouldn't any of the three.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
"Facebook has told banks that the additional customer information could be used to offer services that might entice users to spend more time on Messenger,"
People are spending too much time as it is on FaceBook...and they want more! What the serious fuck. This is completely out of hand...Facebook reminds me of Hal 9000.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
My interpretation is that since the banks said "No," this is Facebook investors recognizing that the company almost shot themselves in the foot again, but were saved by the banks.
As someone said here earlier, it is better to give FB bad data than to delete the account with good data.
This story is about something they did last year, not something that happened after the media interest started.
They are too big to fail. All of the major media depends on FB for traffic. The politicians use it for campaigns. There is probably more but this is enough. Oh...and politicians know that most people pay zero attention to important current events and they do not want to be called out for being the one who messed up jane-q-public's facebook experience. Cause that's how it would be spun (by the platform controlling the message: FB) if they did oppress facebook's privacy intrusion.
Too big to fail. Untouchable. Washington and the mainstream media is being held hostage by Facebook--not to mention democracy. It is a sick fucking twisted symbiosis.
Zuckerberg knows this and is just standing there with his mouth hanging open. I don't think he likes it but the monster is out of the basement and there is nothing he can do without being stripped of his wealth and prestige/power.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
It's scary how true this is. I love the idea of capitalism, but like anything else, it requires honesty and integrity which is severely lacking, and especially so when money is involved. What concerns me even more is how the public opinion is that there is more to life than money, and yet the members making that public opinion contradict it so firmly.
Disclaimer: "Public Opinion" is hard to pin down to specific people. I use it in this case because, in my experience, peers talk about money not being so important, and public speakers talk about the important of enjoying the organic things in life, and so on. This does not insinuate that any particular percentage of people feel this way, but that it is presented as such in open forums.
Nobody BUT MY BANK should have MY BANKING INFO.
PERIOD!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!