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Facebook shares inappropriate amounts of data with manufacturers like Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and blackberry

June 05, 2018


Facebook sharing inappropriate amounts of user data with device manufacturers like Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and Blackberry.

Facebook has been accused of sharing inappropriate amounts of user data with device manufacturers like Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and Blackberry.
Facebook began making deals with companies to help them build Facebook apps for their phones and tablets, and to integrate Facebook functionality into their operating systems. (For example, letting users share photos with Facebook friends without directly visiting Facebook’s app or website.) In order for these integrations to function, Facebook gave these companies access to user data through so-called private APIs. The Times suggests that the level of access given to companies raises concerns about Facebook’s compliance with FTC privacy legislation. Facebook rejects this claim and says its deals were “tightly” controlled and above board.
The Times’ story includes one example of how these private APIs share data. Using a 2013 BlackBerry smartphone, a reporter used his Facebook account to log on to BlackBerry’s proprietary Hub software (which combines social network feeds with messaging and email). After this, BlackBerry’s software was able to retrieve not only data about the reporter’s 556 Facebook friends (including relationship statuses, religious, and political leanings), but also “identifying information” belonging to nearly 300,000 friends of the reporter’s friends.
The Times notes that this level of data sharing is against Facebook’s current privacy policy, which only allows third-party apps to request the names of users’ friends. The report says that Facebook made similar deals with “at least 60 device makers,” but it is not clear what level of data access was agreed on in each case.
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