New scandal .. Beware! Facebook has collected your call history and SMS messages for years

Facebook replied that it is normal for applications to reach the phone call log when they upload contacts to social applications.

Since Facebook launched 14 years ago, it has not faced black days like this. After the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, which is still in the news today around the world, another scandal seems to be looming.


Users, driven by the calls of these days, led by international companies and people who are Facebook's closest people, such as the co-founder of Instant Messaging and Watasab, have discovered that the Facebook application has been deleted from their devices. Android Devices.

Many Twitter users reported finding months or years of call log data in the downloadable Facebook data file, which includes all the data the company stores on their accounts.

One of those users, Matt Johnson, said: "Oh hell! The ZIP file for the deleted Facebook account contains information about every phone call or text message you have made about a year ago. " Another found that the data collected by Facebook for call records show that the focus was on family members.

Ars Technica said that Facebook requires permission to access contacts, text messages and call records on Android devices to improve the algorithm of friends' recommendations and to distinguish between business contacts and those that they share with the user in a genuine friendship relationship.

Recently, Facebook began offering users an option that, if activated by the user, could provide information about contacts, such as phone numbers, aliases, call records and text messages, on an ongoing basis. The company claims that it helps friends find some on Facebook and helps them provide a good experience for all users.

While this option and the information that illustrates this, Ars Technica points out that Facebook has been doing this for years, while Android was not able to deal strictly with the permissions required by the applications. After the system became stricter, developers could still bypass this and continue to access call and SMS data until Google stopped activating the old Android API in October.

For its part, Facebook responded to what users discovered by saying that it is normal for applications to reach the phone call log when uploading contacts to social applications. "So the first time you sign up on your phone to a messaging application or social application, it's a common practice to start uploading your phone contacts," a Facebook spokesman said in response to a query from Ars Technica.

Facebook is believed to have to answer some additional questions about this data collection, especially when it started, and whether Android users really understood the data they were allowing Facebook to collect when they agreed to enable access to the phone and SMS.

Source