Facebook shares user data with 60 smartphone manufacturers
Data was shared with 60 smartphone manufacturers without users' consent, but Facebook said this was "legal".
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| Facebook CEO must testify in the US and Europe after data leak scandal. |
According to a report fromNew York TimesToday, Facebook is said to have quietly entered into data-sharing agreements with dozens of mobile device manufacturers, including famous names such as Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, BlackBerry. These companies have been provided access to large amounts of data by the world's largest social network without the consent of users for nearly 10 years.
Some manufacturers can even retrieve users' personal information from their Facebook friends, including information that is private, meaning it has never been shared with anyone on Facebook.
In one experiment, reporters fromNew York Timesused a Facebook account with 550 friends and a 2013 BlackBerry smartphone to test what kind of data the device requested and received. When connected to the account, the device immediately requested access to a range of important data, such as ID, name, location, email, photos, phone numbers, even messages and contacts inside the device.
This data is then funneled into an app called “The Hub.” The device can collect up to 295,000 “identifying information” about Facebook users, including you and your friends of friends. About 50 different types of information are collected.
Ime Archibong, Facebook's vice president of product, acknowledged the problem but said the deal was "necessary" to improve the user experience. "In the early days of mobile, we had trouble building a consistent version that worked well on every phone, on every operating system. That forced Facebook to build a set of APIs that allowed mobile partners to collect data to customize for their platforms," Archibong said.
BlackBerry said “The Hub” is a private channel that is only available on BlackBerry OS, not on later Android models. Apple acknowledged that it used to mine user data from Facebook, but said it stopped doing so in September 2017. Samsung, Amazon and others declined to comment.
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| Illustration photo. |
The partnership continues to raise privacy concerns, as it violates a 2011 agreement with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which requires social networks to get explicit consent from users before sharing their data with third parties.
Previously, Facebook had to face a scandal in which 87 million users' information was leaked. This data was said to have been exploited by Cambridge Analytica for the 2016 US election. The scandal forced CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify in the US and Europe.