4 ms·

Hi John, just an FYI: if you have Facebook Messenger installed on your phone, you are probably giving Facebook a lot more data than you think.

rybosome 9y ago
Can you provide any additional detail about that? I can’t tell if you’re referring to FB mining the contents of the messages, or the app doing unscrupulous things in the background.
- netsharc 9y ago
  The NSA says they only monitor communication metadata. But that's already a lot of information. Let's imagine a scenario where FB can't read your messages, so it doesn't know what you talk about. But if you talk to people who are mostly Trump critics according to their Facebook activity, Facebook can probably categorize you as a liberal. If you added a new friend of the appropriate gender for dating, and your communication intensifies, Facebook can probably guess what's going on. If it intensified and goes quiet some evenings (predominantly weekend evenings), well, guess who's seeing each other (each guess come with probability percentages).
- wongmjane 9y ago
  Facebook Messenger on Android can read call log
- edibleEnergy 9y ago
  The latter. I don't have specific examples in mind, just that if you do not trust a company's data collection policies, the collection capabilities of an installed program are much greater than when viewed through a web browser. See [1] for an example from a few of years ago. [1]: https://gizmodo.com/facebooks-messenger-app-logs-way-more-data-than-you-rea-1633441673 https://gizmodo.com/facebooks-messenger-app-logs-way-more-da...
drngdds 9y ago
Can't you avoid this (on recent Android versions at least) by disabling all permissions? That's what I did. (I'm sure they're still analyzing the messages I send and how I interact with the app, of course.)
ggregoire 9y ago
Hello, Do you know if it's the same for WhatsApp? When you think about it, it's kind of alarming that FB, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram are all owned by the same company. I can't even imagine the amount of data they have about us.
eyeball 9y ago
Does the same hold true for WhatsApp?

rybosome 9y ago

Can you provide any additional detail about that? I can’t tell if you’re referring to FB mining the contents of the messages, or the app doing unscrupulous things in the background.

netsharc 9y ago
The NSA says they only monitor communication metadata. But that's already a lot of information. Let's imagine a scenario where FB can't read your messages, so it doesn't know what you talk about. But if you talk to people who are mostly Trump critics according to their Facebook activity, Facebook can probably categorize you as a liberal. If you added a new friend of the appropriate gender for dating, and your communication intensifies, Facebook can probably guess what's going on. If it intensified and goes quiet some evenings (predominantly weekend evenings), well, guess who's seeing each other (each guess come with probability percentages).
wongmjane 9y ago
Facebook Messenger on Android can read call log
edibleEnergy 9y ago
The latter. I don't have specific examples in mind, just that if you do not trust a company's data collection policies, the collection capabilities of an installed program are much greater than when viewed through a web browser. See [1] for an example from a few of years ago. [1]: https://gizmodo.com/facebooks-messenger-app-logs-way-more-data-than-you-rea-1633441673 https://gizmodo.com/facebooks-messenger-app-logs-way-more-da...

drngdds 9y ago

Can't you avoid this (on recent Android versions at least) by disabling all permissions? That's what I did. (I'm sure they're still analyzing the messages I send and how I interact with the app, of course.)

ggregoire 9y ago

Hello, Do you know if it's the same for WhatsApp? When you think about it, it's kind of alarming that FB, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram are all owned by the same company. I can't even imagine the amount of data they have about us.

eyeball 9y ago

Does the same hold true for WhatsApp?