Facebook accused of storing data about calls and SMS users

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Facebook accused of storing data about calls and SMS users

Last week, Facebook was at the center of a massive scandal. Became known that a few years ago, the British company Cambridge Analytica was able to get information about 50 million Facebook users (without their knowledge), and data collection was carried out under the guise of a simple survey, to participate in which you had to log in via Facebook.

Thus, about 270,000 people were “polled”, but at that time the social network API allowed collecting data about the friends of these users, which ultimately brought “researchers” information about 50 million people. Then these data were used to compose psychological portraits and develop personalized advertising. Since the main vector of Cambridge Analytica’s work is algorithms for analyzing the political preferences of voters, the data of 50 million users of the social network were used during dozens of election campaigns in different countries of the world.

As a result, Facebook was accused of disregarding the data of its users, negligence and suppression of what happened; Cambridge Analytica is suspected of having links with intelligence agencies and influencing election results; and the whole world started talking about what a huge responsibility lies with companies with which users themselves are happy to share their personal data (and what a storehouse of material this is for marketers, political scientists and many others).

At the end of last week, Facebook was interrupted by a prolonged silence, and Mark Zuckerberg began apologize on behalf of the whole company. But this did not stop the mass campaign on social networks, which acquired a “talking” hashtag #deletefacebook. The campaign to delete a social network account was supported by many famous personalities, including WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton (I remind you that WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, but Acton no longer works for the company) and even Ilon Mask erased from Facebook SpaceX and Tesla accounts. Against this backdrop, Facebook is expected showered lawsuits , and the company's shares are significantly lost in price.

But when the front pages of the media around the world were still firmly occupied by the history of Cambridge Analytica, the journalists of the publication Arstechnica and IB researchers found that Facebook had much more of their personal data at their disposal than they thought.

The fact is that when the #deletefacebook campaign gained popularity, many experts began to recommend users before deleting their Facebook account [DLMURL="https://xakep.ru/2018/03/26/facebook-spy-on-you/deletefacebook"] download the archive [/ DLMURL] with all its information. Soon, numerous messages began to appear on the network from people who did just that and were surprised to find metadata about all calls, SMS and MMS messages in the past few years in the received archives. The archives contained contact names, phone numbers, call durations, dates, and so on.

When ArsTechnica reporters asked Facebook representatives for clarification, the company replied that the key feature of Facebook applications and services is to establish user connections, so that it is easier to find the right people. To do this, during the first login to the messaging or social application, the user is asked for permission to access the contacts stored on the phone, and the user can refuse to delete downloaded contacts through the browser immediately or later. Obviously, contacts play an important role in the friends recommendation algorithm.

Soon, we managed to figure out why many users did not even suspect that they had given Facebook all the necessary permissions to monitor themselves. As it turned out, the problem affected only users of Android applications. Only recently, the Messenger and Facebook Lite applications began to warn users in an obvious way about their intention to access SMS and call logs. On older devices, with older versions of Android (e.g. 4.1 - Jelly Bean) on board, the permission itself to access the device’s contacts is also implied access to message and call logs. Worse, ArsTechnica representatives came to the conclusion that even when Android developers changed the permissions structure and made changes to the Android API, Facebook developers deliberately continued to use the old version, which allowed them to access information about calls and SMS without openly notifying them. users.

In response to a flurry of new accusations in the media (this time tracking users with unclear intentions), Facebook representatives official message . The company reiterated that users provided all permissions to Android applications exclusively voluntarily, understanding what they were doing. It is also emphasized that the contacts, the history of calls and messages that the person "shared" with Facebook, can be deleted . Representatives of Facebook again noted that the information collected was used to “allow users to stay in touch with people who care about them,” as well as metadata supposedly helping to improve the experience of interacting with Facebook.

Interestingly, ArsTechnica reporters are ready to challenge these allegations. The publication cites several user stories at once, who claim that they never gave Facebook applications permission to access call and message logs, did not receive obvious notifications about it, and did not even suspect such activity from the social network.
Facebook accused of storing data on calls and SMS users - “Hacker”

 

[Turdubaev Dastan]

Facebook is digging itself deeper and deeper

 

[seventeam]

Facebook закапывает себя все глубже и глубже

Согласен. Как и Вк

 

[Частный детектив. Москва.]

Why is Facebook doing this?

 

[Частный детектив Донецк]

Hmm, lately something is not right on FB