Facebook was tracking your text message and phone call data. Now what?

RV_ · March 26, 2018

OK folks, don't shoot the messenger, and I don't care if you want to keep FaceCrook or not. I still have an account, which has nothing at all to do with the fact that FaceCrook is doing some stuff that I do not like one bit. If you like them keeping your calls and texts, that's fine with me.

Excerpt:

" If you installed a Facebook app to your Android smartphone, odds are good that Facebook has been logging your phone calls and text message data ever since.

While Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg was apologizing for giving Russian-linked Cambridge Analytica access to over 50 million US Facebook users' personal data, news broke that Facebook had been scraping call and text message data from Android phones for years.

If you looked closely, you would have seen Zuckerberg and company had been snooping on Facebook's billion-plus users since the beginning. Indeed, the company's entire business model is built on profiting from your personal data.

That's not news, but we're only now realizing just how deeply Facebook data mines each of us including our phone call and text messaging records.

Tech site Ars Technica cited several users who discovered that if you used an Android phone and installed the Facebook app, the social network was likely logging your phone calls and text messages metadata ever since the Android app's inception.

By metadata, that means Facebook was tracking when you called, how long you were on the call, and when you texted. Facebook never had access to the content. For example, Facebook could know you called your mom every Saturday evening, but not what you spoke about

It appears Facebook could never pull this off on Apple's iOS. Another social network, the obscure Path, pulled down its users' contact information without permission years ago. Path apologized for this and deleted the data. Even as Facebook apologizes for its privacy invasions, the social networking giant isn't going that far.

On Android, the door was left open for Facebook to easily pull down your data via Android's early application programming interface, or API. Before the launch of Android 6.0 in 2015, to use an app you had to agree to all its permission requirements. In Facebook's case, the company asked for the moon -- access to all your data including your phone usage.

With Android 6.0, Google introduced a permission model for Android app data access. Now when you install an application you must explicitly grant access to specific areas. You can also revoke these permissions.

It's time to turn those off.

You may want to share your contacts with Facebook, but I'm hard pressed to think of a reason why you'd want Facebook to know about who and when you called or texted someone."

Much more and how to do it in the article here:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-was-tracking-your-text-message-and-phone-call-data-now-what/?bhid=19724681974700635514865380622813&ftag=TREc64629f

rynosback · March 27, 2018

Well RV, do you think a good buy point would be at 130?

As I think I heard that they lost some advertisers over the radio today.

Chalkie · March 27, 2018

I know it is more work for the user but I think a lot of what the Facebook app, and all other apps have access to is user fault. A common definition of what makes a "smart" phone smart is it ability to run apps. But the user also needs to be smart about it.

For android at least, Google has made it mandatory that apps that are downloaded from the Play Store have to show what permissions the app wants. Facebook wants a lot. This may not be available on all phones, but on my S8 I can control what permissions an app gets. I happen to have it set to allow access to location and storage which was not everything it wanted (like calls and SMS) but it was all that I allowed.

I do this with every app I download, I look at the permissions it wants and then disable the ones I think it does not need to do the job I downloaded it to do. If the app says it can not run without a particular permission and I can not see a reason behind that, then the app goes bye-bye.

The point I am making here is just like in the world of computers, the user needs to be very aware of what they are doing. And it isn't just cell phones and apps that track you. Heck, this site we are on right here would and does set cookies if one allowed it.

GlennWest · March 27, 2018

I go on Facebook but don't have the app. Just type in and go. Don't know if it makes a difference or not.

Chalkie · March 28, 2018

10 hours ago, GlennWest said:

I go on Facebook but don't have the app. Just type in and go. Don't know if it makes a difference or not.

So basically you are using it just like you would on a PC which opens an entirely different can of worms.

eddie1261 · April 6, 2018

If anybody wants to know who I call and what I do on the internet I will gladly send you a list. The only people this should bother are those doing things that need to be hidden. With liberals trying to violate every gun owner's 2nd Amendment rights, and turn the country over to the criminals, THIS is what worries you?