PRIVACY Among the information given by Facebook to about sixty electronic products manufacturers include, inter alia, relational status, religion or political affiliation ...
New earthquake for Facebook. According to a New York Times survey, the social network has allowed about sixty electronics manufacturers to draw on the data of members of its network and their entourage over the last ten years.
For example, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and Amazon were able to access accurate data such as the status of the relationship, religion, political sensitivity or events that attracted members of the network. All without explicit consent from the user.
Facebook recognizes "partnerships"
The revelation comes from a New York Times reporter. By connecting to Facebook with a BlackBerry brand phone, he realized that the BB10 Hub app had recovered fifty data types for 556 of his friends and no less than 294,258 of their own friends.
Facebook, for its part, acknowledged in a press release that it had set up partnerships of this type which aimed to enable all smartphone owners to benefit from its application, regardless of the model used. But social network officials deny that these data are available to manufacturers without the consent of users.
Practices that continue
"This has been reported internally as a privacy issue," Facebook's former compliance director at Facebook told the US newspaper. "It is shocking to see that this practice can still continue six years later, especially since it contradicts Facebook's testimony in Congress," he explains.
Since 2014, however, Facebook has ensured that users' user friend data access has been discontinued for application developers. But device makers seem to have benefited from more flexibility.
