Outrage Follows Revelation that Facebook is Tracking Users’ Texts and Calls
In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which it
came to light that Facebook had shared the personal information of 50 million
users with a Cambridge Psychologist without their explicit consent - before
said psychologist seemingly guided the data into the hands of election consultancy
Cambridge Analytica - the #DeleteFacebook movement well and truly exploded. Unfortunately
for Facebook, this mass-deletion of accounts led to many of these users following
the on-screen prompt to download a copy of their info from the platform, and it
turns out the social media giant has been logging more details about us than we
may have realised.
As it turns out, Facebook are not only tracking website clicks,
cookies, and all the other bits of often-trivial data you likely expect, but
also the times and duration of calls and text messages between mobile users.
Upon downloading their data from the site users began to notice
complete lists of their contacts, addresses, calls and texts were all present
on Facebook’s servers, sparking widespread concern and in many cases outrage. Facebook
however have downplayed the situation, pointing to their own terms &
conditions as well as industry standard practice to explain away accusations of
over-zealous data harvesting.
A Facebook spokesperson commented, “The most important part
of apps and services that help you make connections is to make it easy to find
the people you want to connect with. So, the first time you sign in on your
phone to a messaging or social app, it’s a widely used practice to begin by
uploading your phone contacts.
“Contact uploading is optional. People are expressly asked
if they want to give permission to upload their contacts from their phone –
it’s explained right there in the apps when you get started. People can delete
previously uploaded information at any time and can find all the information
available to them in their account and activity log from our Download Your
Information tool.”
Likewise, the company had a similar explanation in regards
to the logging of calls and text messages, simply stating, “You may have seen
some recent reports that Facebook has been logging people’s call and SMS (text)
history without their permission. This is not the case. Call and text history
logging is part of an opt-in feature for people using Messenger or Facebook
Lite on Android.
“People have to expressly agree to use this feature. If, at
any time, they no longer wish to use this feature they can turn it off. We
never sell this data, and this feature does not collect the content of your
text messages or calls.”
So it does appear that Facebook are not being quite as shady
as it first appeared to the flabbergasted users who did not expect the company
to have such comprehensive knowledge of their activities, though it does
reignite some genuine concerns regarding just how much of our personal information
these tech giants now have access to.
Sam
is an aspiring novelist with a passion for fantasy and crime thrillers.
Currently working as Editor of Social Songbird, he hopes to one day drop that
'aspiring' prefix. Follow him @Songbird_Sam
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Outrage Follows Revelation that Facebook is Tracking Users’ Texts and Calls
Reviewed by Unknown
on
Monday, March 26, 2018
Rating:
Reviewed by Unknown
on
Monday, March 26, 2018
Rating:
Unknown
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