What lies beneath: The things Facebook knows go beyond user data
Enlarge / Facebook took out ads in US and UK Sunday newspapers apologizing for not doing more to prevent customer data leaks amidst mounting concerns about just how much data Facebook collects. (credit: Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica revelations regarding the exposure of profile data for millions of users, Facebook is now facing an investigation into its data-collection practices by the Federal Trade Commission. In a statement issued on March 26, FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Acting Director Tom Pahl said that the FTC "takes very seriously recent press reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook. Today, the FTC is confirming that it has an open non-public investigation into these practices."
The FTC investigation will likely focus on what data Facebook shares with third parties. But third parties aren't the only entity hoping to win "friends" and influence people on this social platform. Facebook collects a great deal of information about users for use by its internal algorithms. Those algorithms govern who and what users see, whom they get recommended to "friend," and other aspects of how our Facebook experiences are subtly (or sometimes not-so-subtly) shaped by advertisers and others leveraging the platform.
As Ars reported, Facebook has pushed users to allow access to SMS messages and call logs with its Messenger and Facebook Lite applications under the auspices of providing a service. "Keep up with all your conversations in one place" by using the app as the default SMS application on Android phones, Facebook offers. Previous versions of the Facebook mobile app on Android (in versions of Android prior to 4.1) were able to read SMS and call logs simply by asking for access to contacts, which Facebook has described as standard practice for applications. This allowed Facebook to keep track of the time, length, and contact information for any call made or received by the Android device by uploading it to Facebook's data centers. Facebook could also access metadata about text and multimedia messages sent via SMS.
Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments