“As Facebook sought to become the world’s dominant social media service, it struck agreements allowing phone and other device makers access to vast amounts of its users’ personal information,” Gabriel J.X. Dance, Nicholas Confessore, and Michael LaForgia report for The New York Times. “Facebook has reached data-sharing partnerships with at least 60 device makers — including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung — over the last decade, starting before Facebook apps were widely available on smartphones, company officials said.”
“The partnerships, whose scope has not previously been reported, raise concerns about the company’s privacy protections and compliance with a 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission,” Dance, Confessore, and LaForgia report. “Facebook allowed the device companies access to the data of users’ friends without their explicit consent, even after declaring that it would no longer share such information with outsiders. Some device makers could retrieve personal information even from users’ friends who believed they had barred any sharing, The New York Times found.”
“Most of the partnerships remain in effect, though Facebook began winding them down in April. The company came under intensifying scrutiny by lawmakers and regulators after news reports in March that a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, misused the private information of tens of millions of Facebook users,” Dance, Confessore, and LaForgia report. “In the furor that followed, Facebook’s leaders said that the kind of access exploited by Cambridge in 2014 was cut off by the next year, when Facebook prohibited developers from collecting information from users’ friends. But the company officials did not disclose that Facebook had exempted the makers of cellphones, tablets and other hardware from such restrictions.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Unsurprising.
As we’ve written previously, “If you trust Mark Zuckerberg to be the keeper of your photos, contacts, political views, religious beliefs, etc., you’re batshit insane.”
Instant messages sent by Mark Zuckerberg during Facebook’s early days, reported by Business Insider, May 13, 2010:
Zuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuckerberg: Just ask
Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend’s Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?
Zuckerberg: People just submitted it.
Zuckerberg: I don’t know why.
Zuckerberg: They “trust me”
Zuckerberg: Dumb fucks—
We use FaceBook as an RSS feed. Our CMS automatically reposts our article headlines and links them back to our website. That is our only interaction with Facebook and has been our only interaction with Facebook for years. We deleted our personal accounts [which we opened only so we could understand the Facebook phenomenon] many years ago.
If you want to share photos and videos with friends, text them using Apple’s end-to-end encrypted iMessage service. You need to control your social networking, not cede it to a gatekeeper like Facebook. – MacDailyNews, March 19, 2018
It is time. #deletefacebook
— Brian Acton (@brianacton) March 20, 2018
The problem is two-fold: Facebook – and companies like Facebook that thrive on user data (Google, for one, if not the, prime example) and gullible users who piss their privacy and the privacy of their “friends” away willy-nilly while naively sending their DNA off to be analyzed by other companies.
Stop the idiocy! — MacDailyNews, March 21, 2018
Facebook makes their money by exploiting and selling intimate details about the private lives of millions, far beyond the scant details you voluntarily post. They are not victims. They are accomplices. https://t.co/mRkRKxsBcw
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) March 17, 2018
SEE ALSO:
I was one of the very first people on Facebook. I shouldn’t have trusted Mark Zuckerberg – April 17, 2018
Facebook AI predicts your future and sells this info to advertisers – April 16, 2018
Why there shouldn’t be a ‘next Facebook’ – April 13, 2018
How Facebook lets brands and politicians target users – April 11, 2018
Facebook’s Zuckerberg was ready to slam Apple if Congress asked him about Tim Cook’s privacy comments – April 11, 2018
Apple co-founder Woz quits Facebook – April 9, 2018
Mark Zuckerberg admits Facebook scans the contents of all private Messenger texts – April 4, 2018
Facebook to warn 87 million users that their data ‘may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica’ – April 4, 2018
Mark Zuckerberg and the never-ending stench of Facebook – April 2, 2018
Apple may be the biggest winner from Facebook’s data scandal – April 2, 2018
Mark Zuckerberg blasts Apple CEO Cook’s criticism of Facebook as ‘extremely glib and not at all aligned with the truth’ – April 2, 2018
Apple CEO Cook: Facebook should have self-regulated, but it’s too late for that now – March 28, 2018
U.S. FTC will investigate Facebook over privacy or lack thereof – March 26, 2018
Apple CEO Cook calls for more data oversight, ‘well-crafted regulation’ after Facebook debacle – March 26, 2018
Facebook has been collecting call history and SMS data from Android devices for years; Apple iOS devices unaffected – March 25, 2018
Apple CEO Cook ramps up pressure on Facebook, calls for more regulations on data privacy – March 24, 2018
Steve Jobs tried to warn Mark Zuckerberg about privacy in 2010 – March 23, 2018
Facebook has gotten too big, too powerful, too influential for Mark Zuckerberg to handle – March 23, 2018
How to block Facebook completely from your Mac – March 22, 2018
How Facebook made it impossible to delete Facebook – March 22, 2018
What to expect from Facebook’s Zuckerberg if he testifies before Congress – March 21, 2018
Why Facebook’s blatant disregard for users’ privacy could be very good for Apple – March 21, 2018
Facebook’s surveillance machine – March 21, 2018
Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg AWOL from Facebook’s damage control session – March 20, 2018
U.S. FTC reportedly probing Facebook’s abuse of personal data as UK summons Zuckerberg for questioning – March 20, 2018
The problem isn’t Cambridge Analytica: It’s Facebook – March 19, 2018
Apple: Privacy is a fundamental right – September 27, 2017
So Apple collects little to no user data and makes privacy a top priority, but does this mean they have no qualms if they get all kinds of user data from a third party? I’m curious to know what data Apple gets from Facebook and how they use it.
Agreed!
“agreements allowing phone and other device makers access”
Allowing access, doesn’t mean these companies actually accessed it. Also, we don’t know how FB represented the data. Did they state that users had given permission or not?
Should have read the article at the link:
“An Apple spokesman said the company relied on private access to Facebook data for features that enabled users to post photos to the social network without opening the Facebook app, among other things. Apple said its phones no longer had such access to Facebook as of last September.
Samsung declined to respond to questions about whether it had any data-sharing partnerships with Facebook. Amazon also declined to respond to questions.”
How much Apple paid for Facebook to use its data?.
More misdirection by Facebook, cut them loose Apple…..
FB: “But Apple was also in on it, see?” What a slimeball move by FB.
Who is guilty, the perpetrator or the fence? Answer: both.
It is always interesting how Apple fanboys can read this article and then pretend that Apple is a special unique pristine unspoiled tech company. Cook says “we don’t datamine” and all the fanboys blog incessantly how Apple is perfectly private and secure. Stick your heads in the sand, Cook has your data. It’s used for “machine learning”. As Cook always does, he outsourced much of the data gathering. But make no mistake, Apple is trying as hard to be Big Brother like all of them. It is reprehensible that Apple continues to support Google, Facefuck, and the rest of the parasites. Open your eyes people
Should have read the article at the link:
“An Apple spokesman said the company relied on private access to Facebook data for features that enabled users to post photos to the social network without opening the Facebook app, among other things. Apple said its phones no longer had such access to Facebook as of last September.
Samsung declined to respond to questions about whether it had any data-sharing partnerships with Facebook. Amazon also declined to respond to questions.”
Apple received personal data from Google… Of course, Apple immediately returned with a ‘no thank you’, right?! RIGHT?!?
This is my shocked face…..
:-I
“If you want to share photos and videos with friends, text them using Apple’s end-to-end encrypted iMessage service.”
Then some of those friends will post your photos on FaceBook and tag you, making the end result much the same as if you has posted them yourself. Ultimately, anything that you distribute to a few people has the potential and likelihood to make its way to a much larger audience.
MDN take totally ignores the fact Apple was one of the customers !
Doesn’t this make Tim Cook a hypocrite? He slams FB for selling the data. Turns out Apple was one of the buyers, or recipients if it wasn’t an explicit sale for $$$. Am I missing something?
Should have read the article at the link:
“An Apple spokesman said the company relied on private access to Facebook data for features that enabled users to post photos to the social network without opening the Facebook app, among other things. Apple said its phones no longer had such access to Facebook as of last September.
Samsung declined to respond to questions about whether it had any data-sharing partnerships with Facebook. Amazon also declined to respond to questions.”
“Facebook has said that some of the device partners store Facebook users’ — and their friends’ — data on their own servers. But Facebook has also said that regardless of where the information is stored, its partners are bound by strict contracts regarding the use of the data. But that doesn’t mean the data is necessarily safe. One of the lessons of the Cambridge Analytica scandal is just how hard it is to control what happens to user data once it has left Facebook’s system.” – NYT
Replace the word “Facebook” with “Apple” and the same is true. Apple can claim whatever it wants, it bought into the social media paradigm and its users, intentionally or not, have been compromised. Facebook has dossiers on non-Facebook users, as does Apple. Facebook sells the data, and Apple buys it. You cannot be a loyal customer of either company and be 100% secure. It’s only a matter of time before Apple has a huge security breach. Then people will learn exactly how little the marketing hype from Apple does to protect their data. You put the data onto the internet, it’s a marketable commodity and the profit motive will be too much for any company to pass up, including Apple. That’s not even counting the bad actors within companies that could be going rogue. Blind trust in any unaccountable corporation is no way to live.
Why do you people make up stuff? Did you even read the actual article?
You lied.
🍞💩🍞 <-Not for human consumption.
Eff ’em all!