Facebook recently found itself in hot water due to its involvement with UK data company, Cambridge Analytica. The company has reportedly acquired millions of users’ personal information through the social media platform in efforts to build software that can target potential swing voters in various political campaigns like U.S. President Donald Trump’s election win in 2016.
Source: Citizen Digital
Now, the popular social media site has once again come under scrutiny after it was revealed that they log the phone call and messaging history of some Android users. What?!
This was recently revealed when a Twitter user shared that he found his entire call history after downloading his Facebook data. A number of Android users also noticed the same thing, with some of them claiming that their data started being recorded from as early as January 2000.
Source: Twitter
Source: Twitter
Source: Twitter
Source: Twitter
In light of this, Facebook has since released a statement, saying that call and text history logging is one of their opt-in features for Messenger or Facebook Lite users. An excerpt from their statement reads,
“This helps you find and stay connected with the people you care about, and provides you with a better experience across Facebook. People have to expressly agree to use this feature.”
“If, at any time, they no longer wish to use this feature they can turn it off in settings.”
“While we receive certain permissions from Android, uploading this information has always been opt-in only.”
Source: Vietnam Investment Review
“We introduced this feature for Android users a couple of years ago. Contact importers are fairly common among social apps and services as a way to more easily find the people you want to connect with. This was first introduced in Messenger in 2015, and later offered as an option in Facebook Lite, a lightweight version of Facebook for Android.”
According to Lowyat.net, iOS users appear to be unaffected by this because Apple does not allow apps to record texts or voice call histories.
Want to check if your data has been recorded by Facebook? Go to settings and click “download a copy of your data”. You will then receive an e-mail from them containing your information. Open it to extract the files, open the ‘index.htm’ file, then click on ‘contact.info’ to find your data.
What do you think of this latest revelation? Let us know in the comments below!
Also read: Viral Video Shows UK Data Company Execs Allegedly Boasting About Interfering with GE13
