According to a New York Times report, it was claimed that Facebook has for years, been giving Microsoft, Amazon, Spotify and other big tech companies access to more personal user data than it says.
The report claimed Facebook legalised Amazon to obtain users’ names and contact information through their friends, and it also lets Yahoo access streams of friends’ posts despite saying it had stopped that type of sharing years earlier.
In some documents and facts by NYT, Facebook gave approval to Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of almost every Facebook users’ friends without consent, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages.
Facebook have been in this data breach mess since March when investigations suggested that a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, unfittingly used 87 million Facebook users data to aid President Trump’s 2016 campaign. The company admitted that it had breached users’ trust, but claimed that it had introduced a sterner privacy protection long ago.
Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg guaranteed U.S. lawmakers in April that people “have complete control” over everything they share on the platfrom.
Meanwhile, NYT documents and interviews with almost 50 former Facebook employees and corporate partners uncovered that Facebook allowed some companies access to data despite those protections.
In these deals as cited in the documents, more than 150 companies benefited from it — most of them tech businesses, including online retailers and entertainment sites, but also automakers and media organizations. Facebook’s applications fetched the data of hundreds of millions of people a month, the records show. The deals, the oldest of which date to 2010, were all active in 2017 and some were still active this year.
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Facebook Shares Drop
However, this fresh data controversy has immediate effect on the company. It shares fell on Wednesday, the 19th December as concerns about its ability to safeguard user data sparked a government lawsuit, criticism in the U.S. Congress.
Its stock fell to 7.25 percent, biggest intraday drop since July, taking losses for the year to about 24 percent. Reason is that investors are worried about increasing legal issues over data use policies that have distressed many customers and could come with weighty penalties and costs.
Facebook, Netflix Deny Report
Facebook Inc has said it did not give consent to companies to personal data of users without their permission.
Facebook’s director of developer platforms and programs, Konstantinos Papamiltiadis said, “None of these partnerships or features gave companies access to information without people’s permission, nor did they violate our 2012 settlement with the FTC.”
In 2012, Facebook agreed with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over charges that the company was misleading users and forcing them to share more personal information than they had intended.
“At no time did we access people’s private messages on Facebook or ask for the ability to do so,” Netflix spokesperson also debunked the report.
According to Facebook, access to these companies, known as integration partners, was meant to help users access their Facebook accounts or specific features on devices and platforms built by other companies like Apple, Amazon, Blackberry, and Yahoo.
This could also help users see suggestions from their Facebook friends on other popular apps and websites like Netflix and Spotify.
