Facebook is again involved in a controversy. No wonder. However, the story also goes through Facebook Messenger and the provision of private data by Facebook to third parties.
Messenger is one of the most widely used communication applications in the world and unlike WhatsApp is not P2P. That is, Pear to Pear. This means that only P2P applications have greater privacy by not letting third parties intercept messages.
See also: WhatsApp brings improvements to group video calling
Therefore, we can assume that Facebook Messenger is not exactly the safest applications we have on the market right now. Proof of this is the latest report from the New York Times that states that Facebook has provided private data of users' messages to third parties.
Facebook Messenger again shows how insecure it is for the user
While it is not clear what kind of data has been provided, just the fact that we have our private lives exposed to third parties is worrying us.
According to the report, that's not just what Facebook has provided to big companies like Apple, Spotify, Netflix and Amazon.
"- Give Apple access to Facebook contacts and users' calendar entries. Even if they have disabled data sharing as part of an existing partnership.
– Give Amazon the names and contact information of users. Partnership being closed. Amazon did not mention how it used the data, except that it used it "appropriately".
– Give Bing access to view names and other profile information of your friends. Microsoft said it has since deleted the data. Facebook says that only user data defined as "public" was accessible to Microsoft.
– Give Spotify, Netflix and the Royal Bank of Canada the ability to read private messages from Facebook."
These were the conclusions drawn by the New York Times and confirmed by Facebook later. Although not all partnerships were clear with the user, such as Apple's, what worried users most was access to their private messages.
Facebook responded to the accusations by confirming exactly that.
"For the messaging partners mentioned above, we worked with them to create messaging integrations in their applications so that people could send messages to their Facebook friends.
These partnerships were agreed through extensive negotiations and documentation detailing how the third party would use the API and what data they could and could not access."
The problem with all this is that you had no idea that third parties would be entitled to access your information. Thinking they knew, would they continue to use the application? If it were expressly mentioned "We will share your private messages with third parties." Do you think anyone would use this application?
On a personal note I have to say that I am tired of seeing large companies use and abuse our information. I honestly didn't mind giving some of my information on the social network for advertising, but when we talk about private messages, it makes me sincerely upset.
It's time for us to see Facebook being held responsible for this. It is time for more concrete explanations. Or at least refer to what we are getting into using your services.
In short, you can read the full report here and all Facebook responses here.
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