Facebook Courts Trouble for Handing Over User Information to Phone Manufacturers
Facebook is facing the heat yet again, this time for giving more than 60 phone makers (like Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, BlackBerry and Amazon) access to its users' personal information through long-standing partnership deals, which also include a few Chinese companies, like Huawei, Oppo and Lenovo. This, as with the Cambridge Analytica scandal that came before it, included data of users and their friends, in addition to revealing their religious and political leanings and data from users who had asked not to have it shared with third parties.
While there is a definitely a lack of transparency on Facebook's part (but when has it been?), the controversy in itself is nothing new. I, for one, have always been wary of Facebook integration on phones. Remember the built-in Facebook direct sign-in that Apple introduced with iOS 6? Not only did it allow users to share photos to their social circles without even having to install the app, it made it seamless for Facebook to scoop more personal information at the cost of setting up long-term partnerships with device manufacturers.
Apple (which is marketing itself as a champion of user privacy) eventually pulled the plug on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Vimeo integration last year, but if the uproar is any indication, it points to a systemic failure at various levels: Facebook, for failing to be forthcoming about the practice, not to mention, its complete absence in the hardware space (you need a hardware conduit to sell your software, after all), and handset makers for their failure to disclose the data-sharing agreement with users.
Update on Nov. 12: "Facebook failed to closely monitor device makers after granting them access to the personal data of hundreds of millions of people," The New York Times reported, citing a previously unreported disclosure to Congress last month. "Facebook claimed that its data-sharing partnerships with smartphone manufacturers were on the up and up," Oregon Democrat Senator Ron Wyden, to whom Facebook sent a letter last month, said, adding "But Facebook's own, handpicked auditors said the company wasn't monitoring what smartphone manufacturers did with Americans' personal information, or making sure these manufacturers were following Facebook's own policies."
Facebook quickly jumped on the defensive, refuting the Times report, with vice president of product partnerships Ime Archibong writing in a Newsroom post that the agreements were forged in the earlier days of mobile in order to enable the social network to build versions of its application that were compatible with several different operating systems and device manufacturers.
While there is a definitely a lack of transparency on Facebook's part (but when has it been?), the controversy in itself is nothing new. I, for one, have always been wary of Facebook integration on phones. Remember the built-in Facebook direct sign-in that Apple introduced with iOS 6? Not only did it allow users to share photos to their social circles without even having to install the app, it made it seamless for Facebook to scoop more personal information at the cost of setting up long-term partnerships with device manufacturers.
Apple (which is marketing itself as a champion of user privacy) eventually pulled the plug on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Vimeo integration last year, but if the uproar is any indication, it points to a systemic failure at various levels: Facebook, for failing to be forthcoming about the practice, not to mention, its complete absence in the hardware space (you need a hardware conduit to sell your software, after all), and handset makers for their failure to disclose the data-sharing agreement with users.
Update on Nov. 12: "Facebook failed to closely monitor device makers after granting them access to the personal data of hundreds of millions of people," The New York Times reported, citing a previously unreported disclosure to Congress last month. "Facebook claimed that its data-sharing partnerships with smartphone manufacturers were on the up and up," Oregon Democrat Senator Ron Wyden, to whom Facebook sent a letter last month, said, adding "But Facebook's own, handpicked auditors said the company wasn't monitoring what smartphone manufacturers did with Americans' personal information, or making sure these manufacturers were following Facebook's own policies."
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