Facebook Refuses Acquiring users’ text messages
Feb 27, 2012, by admin
Social network says a Sunday Times report that it is using smartphone apps to acquire text message data is “totally wrong.”
Facebook is being accused of spying on its users’ text messages, but the social network says the charges are imprecise and deceptive.
The company is among a wide-ranging group of Web entities, including Flickr and YouTube, that are using smartphone apps to acquire text message data and other personal information, according to a Sunday Times report (behind a paywall). The newspaper said Facebook “confessed” to reading users’ text messages during a test of its own messaging service. The report also says information such as user location, contacts list, and browser history are often acquired and sometimes broadcasted to third-party companies, including advertisers.
Facebook representatives did not immediately react to a CNET demand for comment, but the company told the Business Insider that the Sunday Times report was “completely wrong.”There is no reading of user text messages. On the Android App store, the Facebook app permissions include SMS read/write.Lots of communications apps use these permissions. Think of all those apps that act as substitutes to the build-in sms software.
The company said the permission survives because it has executed some testing of products that need short message service to communicate with the Facebook app. But Facebook says it hasn’t made any such attributes available to the public.
“So the Sunday Times is completely wrong when it says Facebook is reading people’s SMS. Wrong on the terms, and wrong on the proposal that it has been executed,” the company said.
Smartphone privacy anxiety have enlarged in the past couple of weeks after it was exposed that when Path–a popular iOS and Android application–was found to be collecting user contact information without permission. Twitter also recognized that it preserved data on its servers for 18 months after users selected the “Find Friends” feature on its smartphone app.
Updated at 1:20 p.m. PT with Facebook statement: “Facebook is currently running a limited test of mobile features which integrate with SMS functionality. SMS read/write is not currently executed for most users of the mobile app. As part of this test, we announced the occurrence of that functionality within our app store permissions starting with the 1.7 version of our application. If Facebook eventually starts any attribute that makes use of these permissions, we will guarantee that this is accompanied by suitable guidance/educational materials.”
