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Internal Emails Show Facebook Weighing the Privacy Risks of Quietly Collecting Call and Text Records From Its Android Users -- Then Going Ahead Anyway (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on from the priorities dept.

Earlier this year, many Android users were shocked to discover that Facebook had been collecting a record of their call and SMS history, as revealed by the company's data download tool. Now, internal emails released by the UK Parliament show how the decision was made internally. From a report: According to the emails, developers knew the data was sensitive, but they still pushed to collect it as a way of expanding Facebook's reach. The emails show Facebook's growth team looking to call log data as a way to improve Facebook's algorithms as well as to locate new contacts through the "People You May Know" feature. Notably, the project manager recognized it as "a pretty high-risk thing to do from a PR perspective," but that risk seems to have been overwhelmed by the potential user growth.

Initially, the feature was intended to require users to opt in, typically through an in-app pop-up dialog box. But as developers looked for ways to get users signed up, it became clear that Android's data permissions could be manipulated to automatically enroll users if the new feature was deployed in a certain way.

4 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Come on, people, enough is enough! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Face it: you have to leave Facebook. You cannot un-know things like this. There's no rules anymore, they do whatever they want, and they're invading every last vestige of your personal lives now, whether you were asked or not. It's time to leave Facebook, do it NOW.

    1. Re:Come on, people, enough is enough! by DickBreath · · Score: 5, Informative

      Don't tell people to leave facebook. In a democracy, Facebook plays an absolutely important role in manipulating elections, dividing people into echo chambers, or polar opposites violently fighting each other which escalates into real life fights.

      Facebook also protects your private information from ever being lost by securely backing it up with redundant copies being sent to many unknown third parties who pay to have backups of your personal info.

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      I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
  2. Not a surprise! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    This behavior is not surprising at all considering that the only reason that Facebook exists is to collect data to sell to advertisers. Everything that they do is to increase profits. They really don't care about people or privacy...its all about the money!!!

  3. Everyone's blaming Facebook by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This isn't just Facebook's fault. It's Google's too. Note how they only did this on Android phones. Because Apple made their OS protect their users, and Google made their OS enable spying.

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