Facebook allowed "to function as an extension of the company" to Microsoft, Amazon or Netflix and others, giving them personal data and private messages
It is December 19 and the year can still be very long to Facebook. Beyond how their actions have evolved in the stock market during the year, it is impossible to remember a worse course for the company, not so much for what they have done in it (as well) but for collecting the harvest of the bad practices carried out during so many years . After scandals like Cambridge Analytica, multiple security breaches or public knowledge and means of bad practices as a result of the publication of internal documents, comes the final culmination.
Hand in hand with The New York Times (NYT), which recently published an extensive report on the company where the worst stop was Sheryl Sandberg, comes the publication of an investigation based on hundreds of pages of internal documents and interviews with more than 50 employees showing how Facebook would have reached agreements to allow access to data to 150 companies among which are large technology companies such as Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Yahoo, Spotify or the Russian search engine Yandex. They started in 2010 and all were still active in 2017.
Although the accumulation of negative news around the company of Mark Zuckerberg is such that nothing surprises, the information of the NYT have this time a crucial weight, because they imply that legally and consented, all these giants would have accessed huge amounts of information without the user being informed or giving consent. Facebook benefited from winning in number of users and companies "improving their products".
As the NYT summarizes, we would be talking about facts that would give access to many more data to those involved than Cambridge Analytica ever had, with the addition that these companies were known and had credibility on the part of users.
Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon or Yahoo as part of Facebook
Microsoft
Companies that reached agreements with Facebook accessed data from millions of people each month, including email addresses and phone numbers, without the users' consent. Of course, Facebook never communicated to its users that it was sharing this information. This, which is serious in itself, is more disconcerting when the report adds that it even shared data from users who explicitly deactivated the fact of sharing any data.
Facebook allowed Spotify, Netflix and the Royal Bank of Canada to read, write and delete private messages, while seeing all participants in a thread. These privileges went beyond what is necessary to integrate with Facebook in their services (Spotify, for example, shows the songs that our friends listen to on Facebook).
Users never knew that their data could be used at that level, nor that companies operated as extensions of Facebook
In the case of Apple, the NYT reports that its terminals had access to the contact numbers and calendar entries of people who had changed their account settings to turn off all sharing. In addition, Facebook allowed those in Cupertino to hide from Facebook users that their devices were asking for data. It is not clear what the newspaper is referring to at this point, though.
Yahoo, until this summer, for its part, could see in real time the publications of friends, thanks to a feature that allowed to display them on the search engine page. The company affirms, yes, that it did not use that information for publicity. With Bing, Microsoft was able to access data from Facebook friends, and Amazon was able to access names and contact information. Even Yandex, the Russian search engine related to the Kremlin, had agreements with Facebook to access user data.
This behavior is less shocking if, as the NYT reports, it is taken into account that Facebook considered the technology companies with which it had agreements as extensions of itself, as service providers that allowed users to interact with their friends in the social network. . This explains one of the great controversies surrounding the "People you may know" function. Thanks to the agreements, Facebook could access data obtained by its partners with whom to relate people who had a relationship in real life, such as sharing the same psychiatrist. It is something that, for example Gizmodo, had investigated.
Facebook's response to the new scandal has not been made to beg, as it happens lately. According to the company, "no agreement gave access without the user's permission", nor did they violate the 2012 deal with the US FTC.
Hand in hand with The New York Times (NYT), which recently published an extensive report on the company where the worst stop was Sheryl Sandberg, comes the publication of an investigation based on hundreds of pages of internal documents and interviews with more than 50 employees showing how Facebook would have reached agreements to allow access to data to 150 companies among which are large technology companies such as Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Yahoo, Spotify or the Russian search engine Yandex. They started in 2010 and all were still active in 2017.
Although the accumulation of negative news around the company of Mark Zuckerberg is such that nothing surprises, the information of the NYT have this time a crucial weight, because they imply that legally and consented, all these giants would have accessed huge amounts of information without the user being informed or giving consent. Facebook benefited from winning in number of users and companies "improving their products".
As the NYT summarizes, we would be talking about facts that would give access to many more data to those involved than Cambridge Analytica ever had, with the addition that these companies were known and had credibility on the part of users.
Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon or Yahoo as part of Facebook
Microsoft
Companies that reached agreements with Facebook accessed data from millions of people each month, including email addresses and phone numbers, without the users' consent. Of course, Facebook never communicated to its users that it was sharing this information. This, which is serious in itself, is more disconcerting when the report adds that it even shared data from users who explicitly deactivated the fact of sharing any data.
Facebook allowed Spotify, Netflix and the Royal Bank of Canada to read, write and delete private messages, while seeing all participants in a thread. These privileges went beyond what is necessary to integrate with Facebook in their services (Spotify, for example, shows the songs that our friends listen to on Facebook).
Users never knew that their data could be used at that level, nor that companies operated as extensions of Facebook
In the case of Apple, the NYT reports that its terminals had access to the contact numbers and calendar entries of people who had changed their account settings to turn off all sharing. In addition, Facebook allowed those in Cupertino to hide from Facebook users that their devices were asking for data. It is not clear what the newspaper is referring to at this point, though.
Yahoo, until this summer, for its part, could see in real time the publications of friends, thanks to a feature that allowed to display them on the search engine page. The company affirms, yes, that it did not use that information for publicity. With Bing, Microsoft was able to access data from Facebook friends, and Amazon was able to access names and contact information. Even Yandex, the Russian search engine related to the Kremlin, had agreements with Facebook to access user data.
This behavior is less shocking if, as the NYT reports, it is taken into account that Facebook considered the technology companies with which it had agreements as extensions of itself, as service providers that allowed users to interact with their friends in the social network. . This explains one of the great controversies surrounding the "People you may know" function. Thanks to the agreements, Facebook could access data obtained by its partners with whom to relate people who had a relationship in real life, such as sharing the same psychiatrist. It is something that, for example Gizmodo, had investigated.
Facebook's response to the new scandal has not been made to beg, as it happens lately. According to the company, "no agreement gave access without the user's permission", nor did they violate the 2012 deal with the US FTC.
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