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Facebook denies it collects call and SMS data from phones without permission

411 points by wil_wheat_on 9y ago

andrew-lucker 9y ago
If journals are going to rehash Facebook blah word by word, syllable by syllable, then I expect free endorsements to alternatives. It's a small public service in exchange for the free content and clicks.
nukeop 9y ago
"Without permission" is the crucial part. Of course, you have to give the app the permission to do it when you install it, otherwise it will refuse to run. That is why the Android permissions model is fundamentally broken.
- wakeywakeywakey 9y ago
  Could you explain how permissions could be better achieved? Also, could you provide examples of platforms with good permission/security model?
  - bthornbury 9y ago
    iOS is pretty good. The onus for dealing with rejected permissions (in many cases) is put onto the app developer. For example, if you make a photo editing app, you need to request access to the user's photo gallery at runtime of the app. If they refuse, it's fully expected that your app will continue to work with reduced functionality. IIRC you will have trouble getting approved for the app store if your app breaks after permissions are refused.
    - endless1234 9y ago
      But requesting permissions as they're needed is how it works on Android too, since M (late 2015).
      - icebraining 9y ago
        Yes, "was broken" seems like a better description. Still, it's pretty bad it lasted as long as it did - Symbian S60 already had that model before Android was even a thing.
  - jonathankoren 9y ago
    Better questions are: - What is the minimum amount of data sharing required? - What happens when permission is denied? Does the app close? - Do people even understand what is being shared? - Are these click through "consent" screens really giving informed consent? Are they deceptive and biased to get users to give permission without really understanding what is going on? ("Text anyone in your phone" doesn't sound like "Continuously upload SMS and call history." Nor does a giant blue button versus no button, look like there's even an option to say no.) - Why is this data even allowed to be shared?" (I understand that SMS and call data has neverbeen shareable on iOS.)
  - pvg 9y ago
    It seems like it should be an obvious given that just installing an FB app on your phone shouldn't hand FB a record of all your phone calls and text messages. Which is what appears to have happened on Android and nowhere else. The sensible question really is 'wtf is wrong with Android' not 'who and how is somehow managing to do this better'. Nobody asks about cars that don't come with a face stabbing device nor writes long comparative reviews about the best car to get if you prefer not to get stabbed in the face.
    - zodiac 9y ago
      > It seems like it should be an obvious given that just installing an FB app on your phone shouldn't hand FB a record of all your phone calls and text messages. Has it been established anywhere that this was not the case (i.e. that just installing the app uploaded all calls and text messages)?
      - icebraining 9y ago
        The claim is that it had permission to do that right after installation, due to the way Android permissions worked at the time.
  - lovelearning 9y ago
    CopperheadOS[1] has a good permission model (compared to stock Android). Notice that they had implemented a better permission model over Android's even in older Android versions which didn't have runtime granular permissions. It proves what the ad company Google itself could have implemented in stock Android had they not been an ad company. CyanogenMod's Privacy Guard[2] - basically a proxy that sits between the apps and the ContentProviders, and provides user-configurable "fake data" - was another good approach. Not sure if its successor LineageOS has this feature working - a search shows user complaints that it doesn't work as expected - but I hope it has retained the feature. I feel a distro that combines both approaches would have been best. Both approaches also prove that there was no technical impediment to implementing them in stock Android. [1]: https://copperhead.co/android/docs/usage_guide#permission-model https://copperhead.co/android/docs/usage_guide#permission-mo... [2]: https://www.androidcentral.com/cyanogen-os-privacy-guard-keeping-apps-seeing-your-data https://www.androidcentral.com/cyanogen-os-privacy-guard-kee...
    - eh78ssxv2f 9y ago
      > It proves what the ad company Google itself could have done had they not been an ad company. I think you make fair points, but I think this does not prove anything. CopperheadOS has a different user base than Android. A permission model that CopperheadOS users understand (e.g., CopperheadOS users are likely to be more technical) may not work for Android user base.
      - lovelearning 9y ago
        Their existence proves what was possible in stock Android. Why it didn't happen that way is open to speculation. Personally, I feel it was because Google's main business did not, and does not, provide any incentives to design stronger permission and privacy models because it itself depends on collecting information about users. Was usability also a factor? It may very well have been. However, I disagree with a thinking that uses usability as an excuse to treat a user base numbering in the hundreds of millions as a homogeneous set who don't know anything, and who can't learn anything new. People fall in a spectrum of capabilities, and more importantly, every individual is capable of moving around in that spectrum with time. For example, a non-technical user who started out giving one app all permissions may realize their mistake when their email or phone number turn up in google searches, and become more careful with other apps. Stock Android could have catered to that and standardized on a very granular runtime permissions as the default model. They already had existing ACL models like iOS / Windows policies / SELinux to copy from. They could have left the simplification to the market - the equipment manufacturers and users - to decide. But stock Android made it a binary all or nothing choice for a long time, and left it to equipment manufacturers to provide any additional protection, who of course didn't implement anything either because they too had no incentives to protect user information or standardize the security APIs. Even now, Android's runtime permissions, while comparatively more granular, are not granular enough, and in practice become a binary choice where some apps refuse to work if a particular permission is not granted. I have also noticed how Google in their PlayStore keep the permission information hidden away in an obscure location at the bottom of the page, and don't provide any way to filter apps by permissions. How do I search an app that lets me draw on images without asking for contact book information? Not possible without opening every app's page and checking their permissions. I usually try a bit, give up, and head back to gimp on desktop. Is it for better usability? Does better usability mean keeping users ignorant and uneducated? I think it's not a good approach, and based on anecdotes from my personal network, I also think it's a mistaken assumption.
  - contrast 9y ago
    Read the article and explain how they could have been worse! For anyone with a basic appreciation of "honesty" or "ethical behaviour", it is fairly obvious that simple improvements would include: Don't deceive the user about why the app is requesting permission. Don't deceive the user about what you will do with the permissions. Provide the user with an app that does what you say it does, for the purposes you say it is for. Examples of platforms with a good model: in this context, it is well documented that Apple has been superior to Android.
Gaelan 9y ago
The Facebook blog post includes this screenshot [0]. That's definitely an opt-in, although I could imagine a non-technical person clicking through it without reading the grey text. Better than nothing. [0]: https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/opt-in_screen.png?w=1152&h=2048 https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/opt-in_scre...
- sdoering 9y ago
  This is exactly why I do not have any call/sms info in my FB data downloads. I read such stuff and deny the app these things. Btw. something I am required by law here in Germany. I would need written permission of every contact in my phonebook for this upload, before uploading. Same goes for WhatApp.
  - orbifold 9y ago
    Hm, isn't it illegal to offer this option in Germany then?
    - thecatspaw 9y ago
      I am not sure about the wording of the law. But imho no, this would not be illegal to offer. It would be illegal to use, unless you have permission from everybody.
  - the_mitsuhiko 9y ago
    You are wrong about Germany. Only if you are a company you need permission.
    - stormking 9y ago
      No, you are wrong, this law applies to everyone.
      - ccozan 9y ago
        This is true. And it seems that people really do it. I get calls from previous colleagues or companies, weather they can give my number further.
bigiain 9y ago
I notice the Facebook response is all written in present tense - technically not specifying whether they were abusing the laxness of android v16 up until Oct 2017... And I trust everything Facebook say precisely as much a Zuckerberg told us all we should with his much-quoted quip "They trust me. Dumb fucks."
- hnarn 9y ago
  I feel like if you should quote a very inflammatory and controversial "quip" you should at least provide a source. Maybe I'm the only one on HN that hasn't heard about it, but even so, sources shouldn't be omitted.
  - sah2ed 9y ago
    https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
    - hnarn 9y ago
      So, do you feel it's irrelevant to mention that it was said in a chat conversation, in 2004 when Zuckerberg was 20 years old? I'm not saying that makes what he said completely fine, but it's not irrelevant for context.
      - sah2ed 9y ago
        I wasn't the one you originally replied to but it looks like you are shifting the goal posts here. > Maybe I'm the only one on HN that hasn't heard about it, but even so, sources shouldn't be omitted. You asked for sources and I merely provided one such source as "proof" that Zuck actually did use those words in the past.
        hnarn 9y ago
        Sorry, you're right that I mixed you up with whoever posted the original comment. I do think context matters though, of course that makes no sense to say specifically to you.
lucb1e 9y ago
I'm sure they had their "permission" on page 27 of the terms of service. This isn't news... My opinion is still that those terms of services are silly. If I ever do start my own business, one of the things on the checklist is to have a minimal, if any, terms of service, because nobody wants to waste time reading them, and 99% of what is in ToSes is in the law anyway. Except, of course, data collection beyond functional requirements. That would be a good thing to hide in long ToSes.
- deely 9y ago
  And, what happen if some big comp asks you to 'polish' a bit ToS, to make it more 'lawyer style', because otherwise they didn't spent additional $ 10m on you business?
  - iovrthoughtthis 9y ago
    This is the real bullshit. Other people's lawyers are the worst.
    - richforrester 9y ago
      Just for the record; your lawyers are other people's other people's lawyers.
      - dpwm 9y ago
        Statistically speaking, they're probably not the same "other people's lawyers." As in, you're probably small and they're probably big. Big firms acting for small clients generally doesn't work out so well for the small client.
  - zaarn 9y ago
    Personally, I'd say no because I value the trust of my users over corporate money.
  - nasmorn 9y ago
    I got this objection once for a mere 100k. The most enterprisey client stalled negotiations for quite some time because we didn’t have long enough TOS. There was no issue with the content just length.
drawkbox 9y ago
Much of this blame goes on Android and some on iOS/Apple. The phone/call permissions, especially for Android, were needed for any app that wants to suspend when a call comes in and for analytics/social libs. I always hated that about Android especially because even harmless games made it look like you were taking contacts and monitoring calls. Of course this would be abused and it is all over the place. Unfortunately lots of apps/games are specifically built to harvest data and this was a major flaw in their permissions handling. You shouldn't need a monitor phone calls permission to allow a call to come in over your app while someone is using or playing it.
- soziawa 9y ago
  > Much of this blame goes on Android and some on iOS/Apple. Which part of the blame goes on Apple?
  - endymi0n 9y ago
    Apple had zero permission management on the contact book, it was wide open. Especially FB and LinkedIn exploited that heavily and partly do to this day.
    - jahnu 9y ago
      Oh really? I didn't know that. Can you link me up with something about that? Thanks.
      - drawkbox 9y ago
        Many apps grabbed contact lists. Path for instance even had an issue with the FTC due to it [1]. Apple implemented better permissions pretty quickly. I recall other apps doing the same up to 2013. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2013/02/path-social-networking-app-settles-ftc-charges-it-deceived https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2013/02/path-...
    - stefanmm 9y ago
      not so true. "Users can grant or deny access to contact data on a per-app basis. Any call to CNContactStore will block the app while the user is being asked to grant or deny access. Note that the user is prompted only the first time access is requested; any subsequent CNContactStore calls use the existing permissions." https://developer.apple.com/documentation/contacts#1773385 https://developer.apple.com/documentation/contacts#1773385
Maro 9y ago
In the last days, FB stock has lost ~15% of its value (from $185 to $160), that's like 2 Twitters.. Next earnings call will be early May probably.
- tehlike 9y ago
  There will be a rebounce, if EFX is any indicator, and FB is a hotter stock with higher profit margin.
  - Freestyler_3 9y ago
    unless it takes a turn for the worse.
    - tehlike 9y ago
      Everything is possible. Part of last weeks action was cummulative plunge in the stock market, trump's trade wars, rising rates, and so on.
qwerty456127 9y ago
Of course it does and can deny it - isn't a user forced to grant the permission when installing the app? IMHO Google is to stop abuses like this on the Android OS level by means of allowing users to deny any particular permission an app demands and still install the app, encouraging users to grant/deny every particular permission consciously and forcing the app authors to handle denial of any particular permission gracefully without crashes and without denying to function (but in the cases when it is absolutely physically impossible to fulfill the function the user invokes without the missing permission).
- acqq 9y ago
  Both Google and Apple should provide "middle" controls. Even if I grant the app "access" to my contacts, I want to be able to select "which" contacts and which fields. E.g. if I use whatsapp for 3 people out of my 100 contacts saved in my phone, I want to be able to give to whatsapp only the access to the phones of these 3 contacts. Others should be invisible for whatsapp, if I want so. And they should not get the addresses, birth dates and my notices about even these 3 contacts. They should not be able to see them, unless I explicitly want to allow. I know, users are lazy, but at least the fine grained control and white-listing should be an option. Now it's all or nothing.
  - pishpash 9y ago
    There are rooted utilities that do this, or allow you to spew fake data at those apps. That is, if you could unlock your bootloader and install the software you want. You should really blame phone manufacturers/carriers and Congress for giving you the privilege of paying for a piece of locked hardware that you don't own. They're only loaning you a billboard, after all, so what do you expect? Personally I wouldn't put any important information on a locked device, nor do I ever acquire unlockable devices. People have lost their minds giving up all of the most important electronic freedoms that form the backbone of the future.
    - qwerty456127 9y ago
      > nor do I ever acquire unlockable devices. Do you mean non-unlockable?
mrarjen 9y ago
I always enjoy these lawyer correct texts by facebook and how we all know it's been going on for a long time now. If only the general public would suddenly all figure this out! It's 50/50 now if everyone will forget this next month, or if the new trend continues to remove facebook.
- hux_ 9y ago
  Yup. Everything has been reduced to generating memes/outrage and reacting to them. Only exit from the trap is turn off the internet.
on_and_off 9y ago
I remember working on integrating facebook with an app I was working on several years ago. It was in the pre-M days, so Android was still using the old install time permission system. As soon as facebook would be installed without even running the app, it would access the contact database and do network operations (very probably uploads .. ). For this reasons, well among many others, I never installed the facebook app on one of my personal devices at the time. In their credit, when M arrived, they have updated their app pretty quickly to the new permission model. Still, I try to be as conservative as possible with critical permissions. The only one I regret is whatsapp now that facebook owns them.
- cpv 9y ago
  This is an issue for other messaging clients as well, having the "Sync contacts" enabled by default. So by the time you get in the settings to disable, your contacts might on a server already.
  - on_and_off 9y ago
    Yeah, it always made me frown when at the time people were using the hidden API to remove permissions manually after install .. (and complain when Google removed that testing tool before shipping proper incremental permissions in the next release). That's just not how it works. Thankfully now that permissions are incremental, this issue is solved. Except some apps still target an old API in order to keep install time permissions .. like SnapChat. This will soon no longer be possible since Google will force apps to target the last API level. Still, people don't seem to realize what giving an app access to 'contacts' or 'SMS' means. I am not sure how to solve that tbh :/
plasma 9y ago
Facebook Messenger is keeps reminding me to let it access my contacts “to find my friend”; after telling it no it stops reminding for a while then it comes back again. This attitude is just an example of the constant weasel to get access to the data.
kerng 9y ago
We should be thankful that they haven't cross shared the WhatsApp contact info - they probably have a similar stream of information on that side.
- QasimK 9y ago
  How do we know they haven’t shared WhatsApp contact data with their main FB database? I was operating under the assumption based on some news articles that they long broke whatever promises they made.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Yes, they did: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/25/whatsapp-to-give-users-phone-number-facebook-for-targeted-ads https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/25/whatsapp-...
roel_v 9y ago
So I downloaded my facebook data a few days ago and there were no phone nrs in there, no call history, actually much less of everything than I thought they'd have. Are they lying to me or does this depend on other factors?
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  The reports going around mostly stem from people who used the Facebook app on older versions of Android. A combination of people not understanding what Facebook would do with their data, and poor design in the Android permission system, granted access to call and message logs, which is how Facebook got them.
- WA 9y ago
  I’d argue the data arcchive one can download are incomplete. One, it’s missing Likes. Second, I never put my phone number in Facebook, but I know they have it, because at one time, it was pre-filled in the enable account recovery by phone-dialog. So what you can export isn’t the full story. The question however is: how do you prove that and really ask for ALL data they have on you?
  - iaml 9y ago
    Are you sure it's not your browser auto-fill?
    - robryan 9y ago
      Or just harvested out of a friends contacts who has the phone number and email address.
      - WA 9y ago
        Exactly. My point is: FB has way more data about me than the download archive of my data contains/suggests.
    - WA 9y ago
      Yes, I’m sure, because I deactivated that and because they’ve shown me 2-3 different numbers over time for whatever reason.
orbifold 9y ago
Ok, well this is just great. So Facebook has all my contacts from their aquisition of WhatsApp and even though I've never used any of their Apps or had an account with them, I'm pretty sure everyone I typically communicate with has the App and did not opt-out of this collection. So they get data on me for free that the police would need a court order to get. This kind of data retention has been highly controversial in Europe and is currently illegal for carriers to do in some countries, even though the security services obviously love it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention), it is one of the few things I've actively politically fought against. I really hope they will eventually crater like all the other social networks before them and I should have a way of asking them to delete all data they have on me including meta data from sms/phone calls they might have collected.
- mercer 9y ago
  My knowledge in this area is limited, so maybe others can pipe in, but assuming massive amounts of data on millions (or most?) Facebook users is out in the wild, which cannot be 'put back': 1. how well can this be actually used currently to create a proper psychosocial(?) profile of an individual? What's the current state of the art? Any suggestions for books or papers to read on the matter? 2. do we have any idea of how much our ability to do 1 will improve over time, given the same data? I often find it difficult to separate the Derren Brown style 'profiling' bullshit from what's actually possible. And I also keep reading that 'big data' is not quite as easy to use as it's often made out to. 3. how valuable does this 'stale' data remain? Personality is by definition supposed to remain stable, but I recall learning that even things like friendships, political/world views, other non-personality characteristics are relatively unchanging for most people after somewhere (early?) in their twenties. This could mean that even if Facebook does privacy 'properly', or somehow disappears, there's a rich dataset of individuals that, even if only in the future, be shockingly powerful to manipulate. And we're already scarily susceptible to manipulation using 'conventional' means.
  - rocqua 9y ago
    regarding 1, I recall reading that 23 likes are enough to guess a persons sexual orientation with better accuracy than close colleagues can. Couldn't find a source on this in 5 minutes though.
reacharavindh 9y ago
So, this happened and we have confirmed about the dark patterns whether consented or not. What are good alternatives in this "Network effect" age? Facebook - I hardly use anymore. It exists undeleted because it serves as a kind of Social ID. I don't have the App installed anywhere, neither do I access it from my regular browser. The thing I'm struggling to get alternative for is WhatsApp. How could I talk to all my contacts in a cross platform way without annoying them about installing yet another app? Text/SMS - costs money because of shitty carriers. IMessages - Works great but only on iPhones. :-( Signal - good on paper - still have to trust Moxie not selling out, and needs people to install to be any useful.
- kome 9y ago
  Also: Facebook works on every platform, while at Signal they have a strange cellphone fetish. I would love to use Signal, but I have to use Telegram. The Telegram desktop app is awesome, and it doesn't need a cellphone.
  - IshKebab 9y ago
    WhatsApp didn't work on every platform. Not really. The web interface is just a remote control for your phone.
    - kome 9y ago
      good point.
  - zrth 9y ago
    Unlike telegram, signal supports e2e encryption on Linux, Mac, windows, Android and ios.
  - anilakar 9y ago
    Signal has a desktop app nowadays and Telegram still requires a phone number to use. While Signal's QR code pairing method is more awkward than Telegram's SMS one, it also prevents your account from getting hacked remotely in Iran by stealing your SMS messages: https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/49976/intelligence/telegram-massive-hack-iran.html https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/49976/intelligence/tele...
ponderatul 9y ago
I think we are talking differently about this permission concept. Legally yes, they had permission. But the fact that they used those dark ux patterns to request that permission should not be forgotten. Even though legally they are in the right, we as users should make this fact irrelevant and just abandon the platform. Let them be right, let them win the argument but lose the battle with the general public.
- sametmax 9y ago
  The problem is not that they took it. There are always bad actors. The problem is that very few people cared. So even if people start leaving facebook in mass, it will just start all over again with another bad actor.
  - kenning 9y ago
    > So even if people start leaving facebook in mass, it will just start all over again with another bad actor. unless they want to prevent this from happening in the long run?
    - sametmax 9y ago
      Who are "they" in your sentence ? If "they" are Facebook, then it's not the point. If "they" are the user, then I doubt that the current outrage is anything more than the scandal "du jour". I spent 10 years talking about this with people around me. Very little cared enough to even start thinking about it for a minute. Not to mention taking life decision with it in mind.
  - xstartup 9y ago
    Or you can say, they did not care because bad actors paid them?
    - sametmax 9y ago
      Again, leaders are not the main issue. The problem is more that very little users cared.
spdy 9y ago
The problem is not collecting its connecting the data with users who did not give permission. The social graph should be one way not two-way and unrelated data should be discarded. Like in the post we had a few days ago where someone exported his Facebook data and got call histories from his mother in his data.
anilakar 9y ago
I suspected this many years ago when familiar faces from our customers started to appear in the friend suggestion box. I've never installed the FB app on my phone, but our less privacy oriented customers probably have. What pisses me off is that while I can choose what information I share, I haven't given other people nor Facebook permission to read phone call logs that involve me.
- jobigoud 9y ago
  The worst part is that they probably suggested these various customers to befriend themselves, just because they all had you in their contact list. Scenarios like these have been reported with unrelated patients of medical professionals.
  - helloindia 9y ago
    Once I accidentally linked my Facebook account with Instagram. I was bombarded with friend suggestions of people I follow on Instagram. I follow strangers in Instagram when I like their photo feed. Facebook is only for family, close friends and relatives. I linked Instagram with dummy Facebook account to flush my Instagram profile of Facebook friend list and vice versa. There was no other way to delink two accounts.
  - krick 9y ago
    Wow. I just imagined working as a sales agent or something like this, and how much trouble could Facebook cause me in this case. Even for somebody, who always felt some disdain for Facebook, this is quite mindblowing.
- Broken_Hippo 9y ago
  To be fair, I get weirdly familiar faces from different times in my life coming in my suggestion box... and I've never had facebook on my phone. I do have Instagram, but this was a trend before it was installed on my phone. Not to mention that I rarely use my phone's "phone" features, including SMS. I live an ocean away from most family and have never had many friends. I have a couple here in the country outside my spouse, and we talking is sporadic at times since they both have young children.
p4bl0 9y ago
Err, seriously is that their defense? Even with permission, why would they need those personal data for any legit purpose that their users would deem useful?
Aissen 9y ago
Should we talk about Google's shoveling of Google Now, err feed, err Assistant, by constantly asking for us to pay with our position, search and vocal history ? And this is pre-installed on the phone, with the same dark patterns that would push any non-privacy conscious person to activate it, even by mistake.
bborud 9y ago
Well, the whole point is that people are not aware of what they have opted into and Facebook exploits this for all it is worth.
dotdi 9y ago
We all know that a "denial" means jack shit nowadays.
shard972 9y ago
Could anyone here imagine if an application we installed on our computers did this? What if the twitter app went around my computer after asking for admin permissions to find all my contacts and messages from different programs just to beam up to facebook. Such a thing was considered a virus in my time.
- AnonymousPlanet 9y ago
  Oh, if you have Windows 10, the vendor's assumption already is that the same rules apply as with mobile platforms. In that mindset, there's little point to differentiate.
fimdomeio 9y ago
I feel in a way very disturbed by all these news coming out. Not by their contents, I don't feel there's nothing new here, but by the way way they are written. Since when is it not known in the tech world that facebook's business model exists around the idea of making a piece of legal spyware. At least where I live it's unpolite to give someone's contacts to anyone without asking the person first. I don't see why is it any different with facebook. Other thing I don't understand is why aren't the users being paid for having facebook accounts. If you look at it from a certain perspective, every like and every photo is working for facebook, it does not feel like work but it is, since you're creating the products that are being sold.
- darawk 9y ago
  You don't need to pay willing volunteers.
- Joeri 9y ago
  Well, the users of facebook do get the facebook service in exchange for the data they provide. TANSTAAFL. If you don’t pay with money, you’re paying with something else. Facebook is not a charity. The question is not whether they’re allowed to obtain (non-monetary) payment for using their service, it’s whether it was (and is) clear what the price is. What irks me is why non of these services allow monetary payment. Why can’t I pay for facebook with the express agreement that none of my data is sold? It wouldn’t have mass market appeal, but it would silence many of the critics. (Same deal for all ad-funded platforms: just let me pay with money instead of time or attention.)
  - vincnetas 9y ago
    FB income : 15,920,000,000$ [1] FB users : 2,129,000,000 [2] $7.47/year This is quite affordable. Curious how would marketing companies react to such idea. [1] https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb/financials?query=income-statement https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb/financials?query=income-sta... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...
eecc 9y ago
Again this tells me the current security model is out of date. Permissions to stop random hax0r to 0wn your root is basically useless. I don't care about /var/www/... while I'd be desperate if my ~/Documents was whisked away by some dodgy app. Signed/Unsigned is only a stopgap, we need user friendly UX to control which app has access to what data and even within the same app, establish Chinese Walls between personal data access and networked code.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
eecc 9y ago
does the damn opt-in always nag users every time the app opens? Something like that awful LinkedIn prompt to vacuum your phone's contact every time you dare use the app?
krick 9y ago
Since here's yet another thread about Facebook, I'll ask somewhat unrelated question I already asked on HN, but never seen an answer: can somebody explain, why the scandal around Cambridge Analyica (and, "suddenly", a bunch of other rumors about FB) escalated just now, even though we knew about FB, Cambridge Analytica & Trump for about a year at least (well — I knew for a year, sure lots of people knew earlier)? I suspect I know the answer, but I have faint hope that it's not true and somebody can provide a bit more "sane" explanation.
- pbalau 9y ago
  Can't say I am 100% sure of it, but around 1 month ago Facebook switched the news feed algorithm from promoting posts from pages you like, to promoting posts from your friends.
- p49k 9y ago
  For me, it was because a year ago there was only one source for this info, and it was a somewhat dubious one (Vice). I assumed after the initial report that what CA did was more in line with Obama’s tactics, which were more benign and standard. It’s only recently become totally clear that the worst of the reports were true.
  - bhtru 9y ago
    Scout.ai was where it first broke I believe with their “The Rise of the Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine” piece from last Feb.
- manjushri 9y ago
  I was not aware of CA before recently. Wasn't the undercover videos of the executives admitting illegal doings only just recently released?
ggm 9y ago
meaningful consent is a thing.
wizardforhire 9y ago
Granting permission isn't a default setting obfuscated by deliberately poor interface design and reset everytime you decide to update your api.
JepZ 9y ago
Everybody is talking about Facebook these days, but is anybody considering to delete his Whatsapp and Instragram accounts too? I mean, aren't they part of Facebook nowadays? Wouldn't it be consistent to abandon all Facebook services?
- a012 9y ago
  I do, abandoned Instagram, Whatsapp, and FB for a year and I don't miss a thing. Keep in touch with real friends instead of checking the virtual ones.
  - lotsofpulp 9y ago
    If you have international family/friends, WhatsApp is the most ubiquitous and easy to use option I’ve come across.
    - amatera 9y ago
      And why alternatives like Telegramm are not an easy to use option?
      - lotsofpulp 9y ago
        That might be an option, but not as ubiquitous and easy to use. We’re dealing with people who barely read and speak a single language, much less English.
    - seba_dos1 9y ago
      Honest question: Is it really? That can be just my network, but I've never stumbled upon anyone using WhatsApp here in Poland. I only know this name because I follow tech news. Almost everyone uses Facebook's Messenger, some people use Telegram, sometimes Hangouts, gamers use Discord, techies Signal or Jabber and that's pretty much it.
      - lotsofpulp 9y ago
estevaovix 9y ago
Facebook will fall at some point, it’s a disease.
apricot 9y ago
"Without permission." Translated: our lawyers say that some part of the 50-page user agreement you clicked can be interpreted in a way that technically allows us to do this.
randomsearch 9y ago
Facebook should seriously consider offering premium accounts with no advertising and extra benefits. Extra privacy guarantees. Invitation only, gradually roll it out.
- noxToken 9y ago
  I don't understand the context of your post. "Pay us money, and we won't allow companies to manipulate you via advertising." Or "Pay us money, and we won't use every tool at our disposal to suck every bit of possible data out of your life" Both of them are gross, and no user should be subject to either of those dilemmas. I'm not saying that every product should be free of use without any cost. Advertising is absolutely necessary to keep certain products and services free. Some companies take it too far though. Put it this way: eating beef requires that a cow is slaughtered. Should we go for the painless, instantaneous kill, or since it's going to die anyway, should we vivisect it?
randomsearch 9y ago
If you haven't already installed Signal on your phone, please go and do so. To have alternatives to Facebook/W/I we need to build up network effects. Pretty easy to convince tech people to do this, and it would be a good start for getting Signal in as a replacement.
- antoineMoPa 9y ago
  Is signal decentralized? If it is decentralized, how is the network effect built? (Is everyone isolated on their server with a subset of all signal users, or is there a way to communicate with someone using another signal sever?).
  - jboynyc 9y ago
    It is not decentralized. All Signal users can communicate with all others.
  - srslack 9y ago
    It can be federated (and was in the past) but Moxie has complained about federation holding development back. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)#Federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)#Federation
    - sridca 9y ago
      > It is unlikely that we will ever federate with any servers outside of our control again, it makes changes really difficult. https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211165 https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco... So doesn't that mean a single party will control Signal? What prevents them from becoming the next Facebook?
- soziawa 9y ago
  While Signal is nice it's rather worrying that it's free. I'd rather use a paid alternative like Threema.
throwawaymanbot 9y ago
"without permission".... are Facebook really playing word games right now? of course they are..
osteele 9y ago
“Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for. In plain English, and repeatedly. That’s what it means. I’m an optimist. I believe people are smart. And some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they’re tired of you asking them. Let them know precisely what you’re going to do with their data. That’s what we think.” — Steve Jobs, 2010 WSJ AllThingsD Conference Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39iKLwlUqBo&app=desktop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39iKLwlUqBo&app=desktop Transcript: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/03/25/steve-jobs-user-privacy-2010/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/03/25/steve-jobs-user-... Recent article: https://qz.com/1236322/apples-steve-jobs-tried-to-warn-facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-about-privacy-years-before-the-cambridge-analytica-debacle/ https://qz.com/1236322/apples-steve-jobs-tried-to-warn-faceb...
- zbentley 9y ago
  It's almost like the company he headed made next to no money from selling its users' data. Sarcasm aside, it's a good quote, but misses the crux of the issue: incentives. User data sharing/selling (whether through partnerships or advertisement targeting) is Facebook's revenue model. Everything else they make money off of is insignificant compared to that. This, I think, is what people mean when they say something is "in a company's DNA": was a dubious partnership with Cambridge Analytica or an only-deceptively-authorized potential collection of contact/SMS data some sinister plot, or the goal all along? Probably not. Was behavior like this considered less-than-scary to Facebook's decision-makers, swept under the rug, or seen as a minor extension of what they already do to make money? Almost certainly.
rweba 9y ago
I have been thinking about it and I think the issue with Facebook in particular is how AGGRESSIVE and CARELESS they have always been in violating privacy. Just like Uber their philosophy is "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission". And of course they have an official slogan of "Move fast and break things". So all these different controversies are not just a coincidence but are very much baked into their organizational culture. They are obsessed with winning at all costs and clearly see privacy issues as just inconveniences to achieving their goals. I am not sure if it is possible to imagine a social network that truly respected privacy at its core, that didn't try to get away with as much as it could, that put its users interests ahead of increasing Daily Active Users. But if Facebook actually operated like that, I suspect there would be a lot less concern. I don't know if that is even possible though.
moistoreos 9y ago
The issues surrounding Facebook are systemic to our corporate environment and culture. So, really it's a multifaceted problem that the media has disguised as Facebook's sole problem. They're an American company so profit is of course precedent over everything else. If users are naive enough to think everything they ever did on Facebook could be private, then they just cease to use it for private communications. Culturally, there's a giant lack of people wanting to actually pay for most things digital. I don't see why it's ok to pay $5 for a mobile game on your phone but people aren't willing to fork over $10/yr for a modicum of privacy. Should take a poll on this.... Thoughts?
intrasight 9y ago
FB can't collect call and SMS data from my browser ;) It was so patently obvious that they would do this with any app that I am surprised there's a stink being made about it now. I don't understand why people fall prey to the "install our privacy invading app" when the service works just fine via a browser.
HugoDaniel 9y ago
Facebook is in denial
superkuh 9y ago
It's weird that people can get so upset about these limited excesses of surveillance by companies they've given explicit conset to when more and more of the governments of the world are literally recording everything forever and sharing it with a rapidly expanding set of organizations made up of the same kind of people.
- SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
  I’ve this comment written a lot here. And while I get it and even agree partially, there is a problem of scope and precedent. It’s easy for us to say “stupid user, wtf did you think fb was doing?” But, the truth is we don’t actually know. As tech people we are even just guessing at the real scope of FB’s collection and how they use that data. It’s not like this is something a typical user could really know because there hasn’t been a Facebook before.
  - superkuh 9y ago
    And I didn't have to know because I never signed up for Facebook because it's obvious that centralization leads to perverse incentives. It's been obvious from the start but dismissed without consideration ala https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/
    - SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
      Yea, but as to the comic, man sometimes you really do just need to get some fucking work done. If I sent an openLibre document around to my company, well, that would be dumb.
      - superkuh 9y ago
        That's reasonable. But it isn't reasonable to let your personal choices be dictated by where you work. I'm not saying use LibreOffice for work. I'm more saying that you shouldn't let your work define your opinions.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
fortythirteen 9y ago
What is the legality of Facebook recording the SMS conversations of someone who never signed up for FB, but whose text messages got caught in the feed of someone who did? Secondly, were they just siphoning text or did they get a whole bunch of nudie photos too?
aembleton 9y ago
I've just installed NetGuard [1] and found both Facebook and Messenger apps to be very chatty. I guess I expected that. But what suprised me is that my SMS app, Textra [2] was making calls to graph.facebook.com. I have paid for the app so there should be no need to contact Facebook to provide advertising. As it is just there for SMS, I've completely removed it's access to the internet which is possible through NetGuard. 1. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.faircode.netguard&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.faircode.ne... 2. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.textra&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.textra&hl=...
908087 9y ago
This kind of reminds me in a way of James Clapper's "least untruthful statement". > He was asked directly, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?” There was no ambiguity or confusion and Clapper responded, “No, sir. … Not wittingly.” That was a lie and Clapper knew it when he said it. <
ibdf 9y ago
It's time for a decentralized social network to be formed that's not guided by advertising money, therefore no need to collect data. The only platform that does something similar that I know of is mastodon... are there other alternatives?
- CraigRood 9y ago
  I think we should go one level deeper and build an open low level decentralized protocol. that allows others to create networks and 'feeds' on top. The data should belong to the person and the app/website should provide the features.
CodeSheikh 9y ago
From FB official statement: "When you sign up for Messenger or Facebook Lite on Android, or log into Messenger on an Android device, you are given the option to continuously upload your contacts as well as your call and text history." Why FB needs users call and text history in first place? These privacy options are enabled by default when you install Massenger app and majority of the people are not aware of these privacy settings on their phones. And even if you alter a privacy setting on you phone then upon next update of the Massenger application it gets reset to defaults! And we all know the high frequency of app updates. It is like all of these are part of a bigger systemic issue and it smells foul play.
- MikkoFinell 9y ago
  They need call and text history to data mine so they can make money off of you by selling ads, and creating a psychological profile that will help make their products more intrusive.
ibdf 9y ago
I partially blame the Android permissions system. They are so generic you have no idea what you are giving permissions to. Permission in this case: "Allow INSERT APP NAME HERE to access your contacts?" Access what? Read access? Write access? Get all of their name and contact fields? Send them text messages? Call them? Spam? If I don't give them the access, what happens next? Can I not use the app? Will the app break? Will the app just ignore it? There's no information. If you google it for more information you will have to dig for it in some obscure google groups forum, and then yet it's not really clear. Because when you google for Android App Permissions you get results meant for Android Developers, and not normal human beings (jk about the normal human beings part).
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411 points by wil_wheat_on 9y ago

If journals are going to rehash Facebook blah word by word, syllable by syllable, then I expect free endorsements to alternatives. It's a small public service in exchange for the free content and clicks.

nukeop 9y ago

"Without permission" is the crucial part. Of course, you have to give the app the permission to do it when you install it, otherwise it will refuse to run. That is why the Android permissions model is fundamentally broken.

wakeywakeywakey 9y ago
Could you explain how permissions could be better achieved? Also, could you provide examples of platforms with good permission/security model?
- bthornbury 9y ago
  iOS is pretty good. The onus for dealing with rejected permissions (in many cases) is put onto the app developer. For example, if you make a photo editing app, you need to request access to the user's photo gallery at runtime of the app. If they refuse, it's fully expected that your app will continue to work with reduced functionality. IIRC you will have trouble getting approved for the app store if your app breaks after permissions are refused.
  - endless1234 9y ago
    But requesting permissions as they're needed is how it works on Android too, since M (late 2015).
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Yes, "was broken" seems like a better description. Still, it's pretty bad it lasted as long as it did - Symbian S60 already had that model before Android was even a thing.
- jonathankoren 9y ago
  Better questions are: - What is the minimum amount of data sharing required? - What happens when permission is denied? Does the app close? - Do people even understand what is being shared? - Are these click through "consent" screens really giving informed consent? Are they deceptive and biased to get users to give permission without really understanding what is going on? ("Text anyone in your phone" doesn't sound like "Continuously upload SMS and call history." Nor does a giant blue button versus no button, look like there's even an option to say no.) - Why is this data even allowed to be shared?" (I understand that SMS and call data has neverbeen shareable on iOS.)
- pvg 9y ago
  It seems like it should be an obvious given that just installing an FB app on your phone shouldn't hand FB a record of all your phone calls and text messages. Which is what appears to have happened on Android and nowhere else. The sensible question really is 'wtf is wrong with Android' not 'who and how is somehow managing to do this better'. Nobody asks about cars that don't come with a face stabbing device nor writes long comparative reviews about the best car to get if you prefer not to get stabbed in the face.
  - zodiac 9y ago
    > It seems like it should be an obvious given that just installing an FB app on your phone shouldn't hand FB a record of all your phone calls and text messages. Has it been established anywhere that this was not the case (i.e. that just installing the app uploaded all calls and text messages)?
    - icebraining 9y ago
      The claim is that it had permission to do that right after installation, due to the way Android permissions worked at the time.
- lovelearning 9y ago
  CopperheadOS[1] has a good permission model (compared to stock Android). Notice that they had implemented a better permission model over Android's even in older Android versions which didn't have runtime granular permissions. It proves what the ad company Google itself could have implemented in stock Android had they not been an ad company. CyanogenMod's Privacy Guard[2] - basically a proxy that sits between the apps and the ContentProviders, and provides user-configurable "fake data" - was another good approach. Not sure if its successor LineageOS has this feature working - a search shows user complaints that it doesn't work as expected - but I hope it has retained the feature. I feel a distro that combines both approaches would have been best. Both approaches also prove that there was no technical impediment to implementing them in stock Android. [1]: https://copperhead.co/android/docs/usage_guide#permission-model https://copperhead.co/android/docs/usage_guide#permission-mo... [2]: https://www.androidcentral.com/cyanogen-os-privacy-guard-keeping-apps-seeing-your-data https://www.androidcentral.com/cyanogen-os-privacy-guard-kee...
  - eh78ssxv2f 9y ago
    > It proves what the ad company Google itself could have done had they not been an ad company. I think you make fair points, but I think this does not prove anything. CopperheadOS has a different user base than Android. A permission model that CopperheadOS users understand (e.g., CopperheadOS users are likely to be more technical) may not work for Android user base.
    - lovelearning 9y ago
      Their existence proves what was possible in stock Android. Why it didn't happen that way is open to speculation. Personally, I feel it was because Google's main business did not, and does not, provide any incentives to design stronger permission and privacy models because it itself depends on collecting information about users. Was usability also a factor? It may very well have been. However, I disagree with a thinking that uses usability as an excuse to treat a user base numbering in the hundreds of millions as a homogeneous set who don't know anything, and who can't learn anything new. People fall in a spectrum of capabilities, and more importantly, every individual is capable of moving around in that spectrum with time. For example, a non-technical user who started out giving one app all permissions may realize their mistake when their email or phone number turn up in google searches, and become more careful with other apps. Stock Android could have catered to that and standardized on a very granular runtime permissions as the default model. They already had existing ACL models like iOS / Windows policies / SELinux to copy from. They could have left the simplification to the market - the equipment manufacturers and users - to decide. But stock Android made it a binary all or nothing choice for a long time, and left it to equipment manufacturers to provide any additional protection, who of course didn't implement anything either because they too had no incentives to protect user information or standardize the security APIs. Even now, Android's runtime permissions, while comparatively more granular, are not granular enough, and in practice become a binary choice where some apps refuse to work if a particular permission is not granted. I have also noticed how Google in their PlayStore keep the permission information hidden away in an obscure location at the bottom of the page, and don't provide any way to filter apps by permissions. How do I search an app that lets me draw on images without asking for contact book information? Not possible without opening every app's page and checking their permissions. I usually try a bit, give up, and head back to gimp on desktop. Is it for better usability? Does better usability mean keeping users ignorant and uneducated? I think it's not a good approach, and based on anecdotes from my personal network, I also think it's a mistaken assumption.
- contrast 9y ago
  Read the article and explain how they could have been worse! For anyone with a basic appreciation of "honesty" or "ethical behaviour", it is fairly obvious that simple improvements would include: Don't deceive the user about why the app is requesting permission. Don't deceive the user about what you will do with the permissions. Provide the user with an app that does what you say it does, for the purposes you say it is for. Examples of platforms with a good model: in this context, it is well documented that Apple has been superior to Android.

Gaelan 9y ago

The Facebook blog post includes this screenshot [0]. That's definitely an opt-in, although I could imagine a non-technical person clicking through it without reading the grey text. Better than nothing. [0]: https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/opt-in_screen.png?w=1152&h=2048 https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/opt-in_scre...

sdoering 9y ago
This is exactly why I do not have any call/sms info in my FB data downloads. I read such stuff and deny the app these things. Btw. something I am required by law here in Germany. I would need written permission of every contact in my phonebook for this upload, before uploading. Same goes for WhatApp.
- orbifold 9y ago
  Hm, isn't it illegal to offer this option in Germany then?
  - thecatspaw 9y ago
    I am not sure about the wording of the law. But imho no, this would not be illegal to offer. It would be illegal to use, unless you have permission from everybody.
- the_mitsuhiko 9y ago
  You are wrong about Germany. Only if you are a company you need permission.
  - stormking 9y ago
    No, you are wrong, this law applies to everyone.
    - ccozan 9y ago
      This is true. And it seems that people really do it. I get calls from previous colleagues or companies, weather they can give my number further.

bigiain 9y ago

I notice the Facebook response is all written in present tense - technically not specifying whether they were abusing the laxness of android v16 up until Oct 2017... And I trust everything Facebook say precisely as much a Zuckerberg told us all we should with his much-quoted quip "They trust me. Dumb fucks."

hnarn 9y ago
I feel like if you should quote a very inflammatory and controversial "quip" you should at least provide a source. Maybe I'm the only one on HN that hasn't heard about it, but even so, sources shouldn't be omitted.
- sah2ed 9y ago
  https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
  - hnarn 9y ago
    So, do you feel it's irrelevant to mention that it was said in a chat conversation, in 2004 when Zuckerberg was 20 years old? I'm not saying that makes what he said completely fine, but it's not irrelevant for context.
    - sah2ed 9y ago
      I wasn't the one you originally replied to but it looks like you are shifting the goal posts here. > Maybe I'm the only one on HN that hasn't heard about it, but even so, sources shouldn't be omitted. You asked for sources and I merely provided one such source as "proof" that Zuck actually did use those words in the past.
      - hnarn 9y ago
        Sorry, you're right that I mixed you up with whoever posted the original comment. I do think context matters though, of course that makes no sense to say specifically to you.

lucb1e 9y ago

I'm sure they had their "permission" on page 27 of the terms of service. This isn't news... My opinion is still that those terms of services are silly. If I ever do start my own business, one of the things on the checklist is to have a minimal, if any, terms of service, because nobody wants to waste time reading them, and 99% of what is in ToSes is in the law anyway. Except, of course, data collection beyond functional requirements. That would be a good thing to hide in long ToSes.

deely 9y ago
And, what happen if some big comp asks you to 'polish' a bit ToS, to make it more 'lawyer style', because otherwise they didn't spent additional $ 10m on you business?
- iovrthoughtthis 9y ago
  This is the real bullshit. Other people's lawyers are the worst.
  - richforrester 9y ago
    Just for the record; your lawyers are other people's other people's lawyers.
    - dpwm 9y ago
      Statistically speaking, they're probably not the same "other people's lawyers." As in, you're probably small and they're probably big. Big firms acting for small clients generally doesn't work out so well for the small client.
- zaarn 9y ago
  Personally, I'd say no because I value the trust of my users over corporate money.
- nasmorn 9y ago
  I got this objection once for a mere 100k. The most enterprisey client stalled negotiations for quite some time because we didn’t have long enough TOS. There was no issue with the content just length.

drawkbox 9y ago

Much of this blame goes on Android and some on iOS/Apple. The phone/call permissions, especially for Android, were needed for any app that wants to suspend when a call comes in and for analytics/social libs. I always hated that about Android especially because even harmless games made it look like you were taking contacts and monitoring calls. Of course this would be abused and it is all over the place. Unfortunately lots of apps/games are specifically built to harvest data and this was a major flaw in their permissions handling. You shouldn't need a monitor phone calls permission to allow a call to come in over your app while someone is using or playing it.

soziawa 9y ago
> Much of this blame goes on Android and some on iOS/Apple. Which part of the blame goes on Apple?
- endymi0n 9y ago
  Apple had zero permission management on the contact book, it was wide open. Especially FB and LinkedIn exploited that heavily and partly do to this day.
  - jahnu 9y ago
    Oh really? I didn't know that. Can you link me up with something about that? Thanks.
    - drawkbox 9y ago
      Many apps grabbed contact lists. Path for instance even had an issue with the FTC due to it [1]. Apple implemented better permissions pretty quickly. I recall other apps doing the same up to 2013. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2013/02/path-social-networking-app-settles-ftc-charges-it-deceived https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2013/02/path-...
  - stefanmm 9y ago
    not so true. "Users can grant or deny access to contact data on a per-app basis. Any call to CNContactStore will block the app while the user is being asked to grant or deny access. Note that the user is prompted only the first time access is requested; any subsequent CNContactStore calls use the existing permissions." https://developer.apple.com/documentation/contacts#1773385 https://developer.apple.com/documentation/contacts#1773385

Maro 9y ago

In the last days, FB stock has lost ~15% of its value (from $185 to $160), that's like 2 Twitters.. Next earnings call will be early May probably.

tehlike 9y ago
There will be a rebounce, if EFX is any indicator, and FB is a hotter stock with higher profit margin.
- Freestyler_3 9y ago
  unless it takes a turn for the worse.
  - tehlike 9y ago
    Everything is possible. Part of last weeks action was cummulative plunge in the stock market, trump's trade wars, rising rates, and so on.

qwerty456127 9y ago

Of course it does and can deny it - isn't a user forced to grant the permission when installing the app? IMHO Google is to stop abuses like this on the Android OS level by means of allowing users to deny any particular permission an app demands and still install the app, encouraging users to grant/deny every particular permission consciously and forcing the app authors to handle denial of any particular permission gracefully without crashes and without denying to function (but in the cases when it is absolutely physically impossible to fulfill the function the user invokes without the missing permission).

acqq 9y ago
Both Google and Apple should provide "middle" controls. Even if I grant the app "access" to my contacts, I want to be able to select "which" contacts and which fields. E.g. if I use whatsapp for 3 people out of my 100 contacts saved in my phone, I want to be able to give to whatsapp only the access to the phones of these 3 contacts. Others should be invisible for whatsapp, if I want so. And they should not get the addresses, birth dates and my notices about even these 3 contacts. They should not be able to see them, unless I explicitly want to allow. I know, users are lazy, but at least the fine grained control and white-listing should be an option. Now it's all or nothing.
- pishpash 9y ago
  There are rooted utilities that do this, or allow you to spew fake data at those apps. That is, if you could unlock your bootloader and install the software you want. You should really blame phone manufacturers/carriers and Congress for giving you the privilege of paying for a piece of locked hardware that you don't own. They're only loaning you a billboard, after all, so what do you expect? Personally I wouldn't put any important information on a locked device, nor do I ever acquire unlockable devices. People have lost their minds giving up all of the most important electronic freedoms that form the backbone of the future.
  - qwerty456127 9y ago
    > nor do I ever acquire unlockable devices. Do you mean non-unlockable?

mrarjen 9y ago

I always enjoy these lawyer correct texts by facebook and how we all know it's been going on for a long time now. If only the general public would suddenly all figure this out! It's 50/50 now if everyone will forget this next month, or if the new trend continues to remove facebook.

hux_ 9y ago
Yup. Everything has been reduced to generating memes/outrage and reacting to them. Only exit from the trap is turn off the internet.

on_and_off 9y ago

I remember working on integrating facebook with an app I was working on several years ago. It was in the pre-M days, so Android was still using the old install time permission system. As soon as facebook would be installed without even running the app, it would access the contact database and do network operations (very probably uploads .. ). For this reasons, well among many others, I never installed the facebook app on one of my personal devices at the time. In their credit, when M arrived, they have updated their app pretty quickly to the new permission model. Still, I try to be as conservative as possible with critical permissions. The only one I regret is whatsapp now that facebook owns them.

cpv 9y ago
This is an issue for other messaging clients as well, having the "Sync contacts" enabled by default. So by the time you get in the settings to disable, your contacts might on a server already.
- on_and_off 9y ago
  Yeah, it always made me frown when at the time people were using the hidden API to remove permissions manually after install .. (and complain when Google removed that testing tool before shipping proper incremental permissions in the next release). That's just not how it works. Thankfully now that permissions are incremental, this issue is solved. Except some apps still target an old API in order to keep install time permissions .. like SnapChat. This will soon no longer be possible since Google will force apps to target the last API level. Still, people don't seem to realize what giving an app access to 'contacts' or 'SMS' means. I am not sure how to solve that tbh :/

plasma 9y ago

Facebook Messenger is keeps reminding me to let it access my contacts “to find my friend”; after telling it no it stops reminding for a while then it comes back again. This attitude is just an example of the constant weasel to get access to the data.

kerng 9y ago

We should be thankful that they haven't cross shared the WhatsApp contact info - they probably have a similar stream of information on that side.

QasimK 9y ago
How do we know they haven’t shared WhatsApp contact data with their main FB database? I was operating under the assumption based on some news articles that they long broke whatever promises they made.
icebraining 9y ago
Yes, they did: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/25/whatsapp-to-give-users-phone-number-facebook-for-targeted-ads https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/25/whatsapp-...

roel_v 9y ago

So I downloaded my facebook data a few days ago and there were no phone nrs in there, no call history, actually much less of everything than I thought they'd have. Are they lying to me or does this depend on other factors?

ubernostrum 9y ago
The reports going around mostly stem from people who used the Facebook app on older versions of Android. A combination of people not understanding what Facebook would do with their data, and poor design in the Android permission system, granted access to call and message logs, which is how Facebook got them.
WA 9y ago
I’d argue the data arcchive one can download are incomplete. One, it’s missing Likes. Second, I never put my phone number in Facebook, but I know they have it, because at one time, it was pre-filled in the enable account recovery by phone-dialog. So what you can export isn’t the full story. The question however is: how do you prove that and really ask for ALL data they have on you?
- iaml 9y ago
  Are you sure it's not your browser auto-fill?
  - robryan 9y ago
    Or just harvested out of a friends contacts who has the phone number and email address.
    - WA 9y ago
      Exactly. My point is: FB has way more data about me than the download archive of my data contains/suggests.
  - WA 9y ago
    Yes, I’m sure, because I deactivated that and because they’ve shown me 2-3 different numbers over time for whatever reason.

orbifold 9y ago

Ok, well this is just great. So Facebook has all my contacts from their aquisition of WhatsApp and even though I've never used any of their Apps or had an account with them, I'm pretty sure everyone I typically communicate with has the App and did not opt-out of this collection. So they get data on me for free that the police would need a court order to get. This kind of data retention has been highly controversial in Europe and is currently illegal for carriers to do in some countries, even though the security services obviously love it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention), it is one of the few things I've actively politically fought against. I really hope they will eventually crater like all the other social networks before them and I should have a way of asking them to delete all data they have on me including meta data from sms/phone calls they might have collected.

mercer 9y ago
My knowledge in this area is limited, so maybe others can pipe in, but assuming massive amounts of data on millions (or most?) Facebook users is out in the wild, which cannot be 'put back': 1. how well can this be actually used currently to create a proper psychosocial(?) profile of an individual? What's the current state of the art? Any suggestions for books or papers to read on the matter? 2. do we have any idea of how much our ability to do 1 will improve over time, given the same data? I often find it difficult to separate the Derren Brown style 'profiling' bullshit from what's actually possible. And I also keep reading that 'big data' is not quite as easy to use as it's often made out to. 3. how valuable does this 'stale' data remain? Personality is by definition supposed to remain stable, but I recall learning that even things like friendships, political/world views, other non-personality characteristics are relatively unchanging for most people after somewhere (early?) in their twenties. This could mean that even if Facebook does privacy 'properly', or somehow disappears, there's a rich dataset of individuals that, even if only in the future, be shockingly powerful to manipulate. And we're already scarily susceptible to manipulation using 'conventional' means.
- rocqua 9y ago
  regarding 1, I recall reading that 23 likes are enough to guess a persons sexual orientation with better accuracy than close colleagues can. Couldn't find a source on this in 5 minutes though.

reacharavindh 9y ago

So, this happened and we have confirmed about the dark patterns whether consented or not. What are good alternatives in this "Network effect" age? Facebook - I hardly use anymore. It exists undeleted because it serves as a kind of Social ID. I don't have the App installed anywhere, neither do I access it from my regular browser. The thing I'm struggling to get alternative for is WhatsApp. How could I talk to all my contacts in a cross platform way without annoying them about installing yet another app? Text/SMS - costs money because of shitty carriers. IMessages - Works great but only on iPhones. :-( Signal - good on paper - still have to trust Moxie not selling out, and needs people to install to be any useful.

kome 9y ago
Also: Facebook works on every platform, while at Signal they have a strange cellphone fetish. I would love to use Signal, but I have to use Telegram. The Telegram desktop app is awesome, and it doesn't need a cellphone.
- IshKebab 9y ago
  WhatsApp didn't work on every platform. Not really. The web interface is just a remote control for your phone.
  - kome 9y ago
    good point.
- zrth 9y ago
  Unlike telegram, signal supports e2e encryption on Linux, Mac, windows, Android and ios.
- anilakar 9y ago
  Signal has a desktop app nowadays and Telegram still requires a phone number to use. While Signal's QR code pairing method is more awkward than Telegram's SMS one, it also prevents your account from getting hacked remotely in Iran by stealing your SMS messages: https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/49976/intelligence/telegram-massive-hack-iran.html https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/49976/intelligence/tele...

ponderatul 9y ago

I think we are talking differently about this permission concept. Legally yes, they had permission. But the fact that they used those dark ux patterns to request that permission should not be forgotten. Even though legally they are in the right, we as users should make this fact irrelevant and just abandon the platform. Let them be right, let them win the argument but lose the battle with the general public.

sametmax 9y ago
The problem is not that they took it. There are always bad actors. The problem is that very few people cared. So even if people start leaving facebook in mass, it will just start all over again with another bad actor.
- kenning 9y ago
  > So even if people start leaving facebook in mass, it will just start all over again with another bad actor. unless they want to prevent this from happening in the long run?
  - sametmax 9y ago
    Who are "they" in your sentence ? If "they" are Facebook, then it's not the point. If "they" are the user, then I doubt that the current outrage is anything more than the scandal "du jour". I spent 10 years talking about this with people around me. Very little cared enough to even start thinking about it for a minute. Not to mention taking life decision with it in mind.
- xstartup 9y ago
  Or you can say, they did not care because bad actors paid them?
  - sametmax 9y ago
    Again, leaders are not the main issue. The problem is more that very little users cared.

spdy 9y ago

The problem is not collecting its connecting the data with users who did not give permission. The social graph should be one way not two-way and unrelated data should be discarded. Like in the post we had a few days ago where someone exported his Facebook data and got call histories from his mother in his data.

anilakar 9y ago

I suspected this many years ago when familiar faces from our customers started to appear in the friend suggestion box. I've never installed the FB app on my phone, but our less privacy oriented customers probably have. What pisses me off is that while I can choose what information I share, I haven't given other people nor Facebook permission to read phone call logs that involve me.

jobigoud 9y ago
The worst part is that they probably suggested these various customers to befriend themselves, just because they all had you in their contact list. Scenarios like these have been reported with unrelated patients of medical professionals.
- helloindia 9y ago
  Once I accidentally linked my Facebook account with Instagram. I was bombarded with friend suggestions of people I follow on Instagram. I follow strangers in Instagram when I like their photo feed. Facebook is only for family, close friends and relatives. I linked Instagram with dummy Facebook account to flush my Instagram profile of Facebook friend list and vice versa. There was no other way to delink two accounts.
- krick 9y ago
  Wow. I just imagined working as a sales agent or something like this, and how much trouble could Facebook cause me in this case. Even for somebody, who always felt some disdain for Facebook, this is quite mindblowing.
Broken_Hippo 9y ago
To be fair, I get weirdly familiar faces from different times in my life coming in my suggestion box... and I've never had facebook on my phone. I do have Instagram, but this was a trend before it was installed on my phone. Not to mention that I rarely use my phone's "phone" features, including SMS. I live an ocean away from most family and have never had many friends. I have a couple here in the country outside my spouse, and we talking is sporadic at times since they both have young children.

p4bl0 9y ago

Err, seriously is that their defense? Even with permission, why would they need those personal data for any legit purpose that their users would deem useful?

Aissen 9y ago

Should we talk about Google's shoveling of Google Now, err feed, err Assistant, by constantly asking for us to pay with our position, search and vocal history ? And this is pre-installed on the phone, with the same dark patterns that would push any non-privacy conscious person to activate it, even by mistake.

bborud 9y ago

Well, the whole point is that people are not aware of what they have opted into and Facebook exploits this for all it is worth.

dotdi 9y ago

We all know that a "denial" means jack shit nowadays.

shard972 9y ago

Could anyone here imagine if an application we installed on our computers did this? What if the twitter app went around my computer after asking for admin permissions to find all my contacts and messages from different programs just to beam up to facebook. Such a thing was considered a virus in my time.

AnonymousPlanet 9y ago
Oh, if you have Windows 10, the vendor's assumption already is that the same rules apply as with mobile platforms. In that mindset, there's little point to differentiate.

fimdomeio 9y ago

I feel in a way very disturbed by all these news coming out. Not by their contents, I don't feel there's nothing new here, but by the way way they are written. Since when is it not known in the tech world that facebook's business model exists around the idea of making a piece of legal spyware. At least where I live it's unpolite to give someone's contacts to anyone without asking the person first. I don't see why is it any different with facebook. Other thing I don't understand is why aren't the users being paid for having facebook accounts. If you look at it from a certain perspective, every like and every photo is working for facebook, it does not feel like work but it is, since you're creating the products that are being sold.

darawk 9y ago
You don't need to pay willing volunteers.
Joeri 9y ago
Well, the users of facebook do get the facebook service in exchange for the data they provide. TANSTAAFL. If you don’t pay with money, you’re paying with something else. Facebook is not a charity. The question is not whether they’re allowed to obtain (non-monetary) payment for using their service, it’s whether it was (and is) clear what the price is. What irks me is why non of these services allow monetary payment. Why can’t I pay for facebook with the express agreement that none of my data is sold? It wouldn’t have mass market appeal, but it would silence many of the critics. (Same deal for all ad-funded platforms: just let me pay with money instead of time or attention.)
- vincnetas 9y ago
  FB income : 15,920,000,000$ [1] FB users : 2,129,000,000 [2] $7.47/year This is quite affordable. Curious how would marketing companies react to such idea. [1] https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb/financials?query=income-statement https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb/financials?query=income-sta... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...

eecc 9y ago

Again this tells me the current security model is out of date. Permissions to stop random hax0r to 0wn your root is basically useless. I don't care about /var/www/... while I'd be desperate if my ~/Documents was whisked away by some dodgy app. Signed/Unsigned is only a stopgap, we need user friendly UX to control which app has access to what data and even within the same app, establish Chinese Walls between personal data access and networked code.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

eecc 9y ago

does the damn opt-in always nag users every time the app opens? Something like that awful LinkedIn prompt to vacuum your phone's contact every time you dare use the app?

krick 9y ago

Since here's yet another thread about Facebook, I'll ask somewhat unrelated question I already asked on HN, but never seen an answer: can somebody explain, why the scandal around Cambridge Analyica (and, "suddenly", a bunch of other rumors about FB) escalated just now, even though we knew about FB, Cambridge Analytica & Trump for about a year at least (well — I knew for a year, sure lots of people knew earlier)? I suspect I know the answer, but I have faint hope that it's not true and somebody can provide a bit more "sane" explanation.

pbalau 9y ago
Can't say I am 100% sure of it, but around 1 month ago Facebook switched the news feed algorithm from promoting posts from pages you like, to promoting posts from your friends.
p49k 9y ago
For me, it was because a year ago there was only one source for this info, and it was a somewhat dubious one (Vice). I assumed after the initial report that what CA did was more in line with Obama’s tactics, which were more benign and standard. It’s only recently become totally clear that the worst of the reports were true.
- bhtru 9y ago
  Scout.ai was where it first broke I believe with their “The Rise of the Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine” piece from last Feb.
manjushri 9y ago
I was not aware of CA before recently. Wasn't the undercover videos of the executives admitting illegal doings only just recently released?

ggm 9y ago

meaningful consent is a thing.

wizardforhire 9y ago

Granting permission isn't a default setting obfuscated by deliberately poor interface design and reset everytime you decide to update your api.

JepZ 9y ago

Everybody is talking about Facebook these days, but is anybody considering to delete his Whatsapp and Instragram accounts too? I mean, aren't they part of Facebook nowadays? Wouldn't it be consistent to abandon all Facebook services?

a012 9y ago
I do, abandoned Instagram, Whatsapp, and FB for a year and I don't miss a thing. Keep in touch with real friends instead of checking the virtual ones.
- lotsofpulp 9y ago
  If you have international family/friends, WhatsApp is the most ubiquitous and easy to use option I’ve come across.
  - amatera 9y ago
    And why alternatives like Telegramm are not an easy to use option?
    - lotsofpulp 9y ago
      That might be an option, but not as ubiquitous and easy to use. We’re dealing with people who barely read and speak a single language, much less English.
  - seba_dos1 9y ago
    Honest question: Is it really? That can be just my network, but I've never stumbled upon anyone using WhatsApp here in Poland. I only know this name because I follow tech news. Almost everyone uses Facebook's Messenger, some people use Telegram, sometimes Hangouts, gamers use Discord, techies Signal or Jabber and that's pretty much it.
    - lotsofpulp 9y ago

estevaovix 9y ago

Facebook will fall at some point, it’s a disease.

apricot 9y ago

"Without permission." Translated: our lawyers say that some part of the 50-page user agreement you clicked can be interpreted in a way that technically allows us to do this.

randomsearch 9y ago

Facebook should seriously consider offering premium accounts with no advertising and extra benefits. Extra privacy guarantees. Invitation only, gradually roll it out.

noxToken 9y ago
I don't understand the context of your post. "Pay us money, and we won't allow companies to manipulate you via advertising." Or "Pay us money, and we won't use every tool at our disposal to suck every bit of possible data out of your life" Both of them are gross, and no user should be subject to either of those dilemmas. I'm not saying that every product should be free of use without any cost. Advertising is absolutely necessary to keep certain products and services free. Some companies take it too far though. Put it this way: eating beef requires that a cow is slaughtered. Should we go for the painless, instantaneous kill, or since it's going to die anyway, should we vivisect it?

randomsearch 9y ago

If you haven't already installed Signal on your phone, please go and do so. To have alternatives to Facebook/W/I we need to build up network effects. Pretty easy to convince tech people to do this, and it would be a good start for getting Signal in as a replacement.

antoineMoPa 9y ago
Is signal decentralized? If it is decentralized, how is the network effect built? (Is everyone isolated on their server with a subset of all signal users, or is there a way to communicate with someone using another signal sever?).
- jboynyc 9y ago
  It is not decentralized. All Signal users can communicate with all others.
- srslack 9y ago
  It can be federated (and was in the past) but Moxie has complained about federation holding development back. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)#Federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)#Federation
  - sridca 9y ago
    > It is unlikely that we will ever federate with any servers outside of our control again, it makes changes really difficult. https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211165 https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco... So doesn't that mean a single party will control Signal? What prevents them from becoming the next Facebook?
soziawa 9y ago
While Signal is nice it's rather worrying that it's free. I'd rather use a paid alternative like Threema.

throwawaymanbot 9y ago

"without permission".... are Facebook really playing word games right now? of course they are..

osteele 9y ago

“Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for. In plain English, and repeatedly. That’s what it means. I’m an optimist. I believe people are smart. And some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they’re tired of you asking them. Let them know precisely what you’re going to do with their data. That’s what we think.” — Steve Jobs, 2010 WSJ AllThingsD Conference Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39iKLwlUqBo&app=desktop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39iKLwlUqBo&app=desktop Transcript: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/03/25/steve-jobs-user-privacy-2010/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/03/25/steve-jobs-user-... Recent article: https://qz.com/1236322/apples-steve-jobs-tried-to-warn-facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-about-privacy-years-before-the-cambridge-analytica-debacle/ https://qz.com/1236322/apples-steve-jobs-tried-to-warn-faceb...

zbentley 9y ago
It's almost like the company he headed made next to no money from selling its users' data. Sarcasm aside, it's a good quote, but misses the crux of the issue: incentives. User data sharing/selling (whether through partnerships or advertisement targeting) is Facebook's revenue model. Everything else they make money off of is insignificant compared to that. This, I think, is what people mean when they say something is "in a company's DNA": was a dubious partnership with Cambridge Analytica or an only-deceptively-authorized potential collection of contact/SMS data some sinister plot, or the goal all along? Probably not. Was behavior like this considered less-than-scary to Facebook's decision-makers, swept under the rug, or seen as a minor extension of what they already do to make money? Almost certainly.

rweba 9y ago

I have been thinking about it and I think the issue with Facebook in particular is how AGGRESSIVE and CARELESS they have always been in violating privacy. Just like Uber their philosophy is "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission". And of course they have an official slogan of "Move fast and break things". So all these different controversies are not just a coincidence but are very much baked into their organizational culture. They are obsessed with winning at all costs and clearly see privacy issues as just inconveniences to achieving their goals. I am not sure if it is possible to imagine a social network that truly respected privacy at its core, that didn't try to get away with as much as it could, that put its users interests ahead of increasing Daily Active Users. But if Facebook actually operated like that, I suspect there would be a lot less concern. I don't know if that is even possible though.

moistoreos 9y ago

The issues surrounding Facebook are systemic to our corporate environment and culture. So, really it's a multifaceted problem that the media has disguised as Facebook's sole problem. They're an American company so profit is of course precedent over everything else. If users are naive enough to think everything they ever did on Facebook could be private, then they just cease to use it for private communications. Culturally, there's a giant lack of people wanting to actually pay for most things digital. I don't see why it's ok to pay $5 for a mobile game on your phone but people aren't willing to fork over $10/yr for a modicum of privacy. Should take a poll on this.... Thoughts?

intrasight 9y ago

FB can't collect call and SMS data from my browser ;) It was so patently obvious that they would do this with any app that I am surprised there's a stink being made about it now. I don't understand why people fall prey to the "install our privacy invading app" when the service works just fine via a browser.

HugoDaniel 9y ago

Facebook is in denial

superkuh 9y ago

It's weird that people can get so upset about these limited excesses of surveillance by companies they've given explicit conset to when more and more of the governments of the world are literally recording everything forever and sharing it with a rapidly expanding set of organizations made up of the same kind of people.

SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
I’ve this comment written a lot here. And while I get it and even agree partially, there is a problem of scope and precedent. It’s easy for us to say “stupid user, wtf did you think fb was doing?” But, the truth is we don’t actually know. As tech people we are even just guessing at the real scope of FB’s collection and how they use that data. It’s not like this is something a typical user could really know because there hasn’t been a Facebook before.
- superkuh 9y ago
  And I didn't have to know because I never signed up for Facebook because it's obvious that centralization leads to perverse incentives. It's been obvious from the start but dismissed without consideration ala https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/
  - SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
    Yea, but as to the comic, man sometimes you really do just need to get some fucking work done. If I sent an openLibre document around to my company, well, that would be dumb.
    - superkuh 9y ago
      That's reasonable. But it isn't reasonable to let your personal choices be dictated by where you work. I'm not saying use LibreOffice for work. I'm more saying that you shouldn't let your work define your opinions.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

fortythirteen 9y ago

What is the legality of Facebook recording the SMS conversations of someone who never signed up for FB, but whose text messages got caught in the feed of someone who did? Secondly, were they just siphoning text or did they get a whole bunch of nudie photos too?

aembleton 9y ago

I've just installed NetGuard [1] and found both Facebook and Messenger apps to be very chatty. I guess I expected that. But what suprised me is that my SMS app, Textra [2] was making calls to graph.facebook.com. I have paid for the app so there should be no need to contact Facebook to provide advertising. As it is just there for SMS, I've completely removed it's access to the internet which is possible through NetGuard. 1. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.faircode.netguard&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.faircode.ne... 2. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.textra&hl=en_GB https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.textra&hl=...

908087 9y ago

This kind of reminds me in a way of James Clapper's "least untruthful statement". > He was asked directly, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?” There was no ambiguity or confusion and Clapper responded, “No, sir. … Not wittingly.” That was a lie and Clapper knew it when he said it. <

ibdf 9y ago

It's time for a decentralized social network to be formed that's not guided by advertising money, therefore no need to collect data. The only platform that does something similar that I know of is mastodon... are there other alternatives?

CraigRood 9y ago
I think we should go one level deeper and build an open low level decentralized protocol. that allows others to create networks and 'feeds' on top. The data should belong to the person and the app/website should provide the features.

CodeSheikh 9y ago

From FB official statement: "When you sign up for Messenger or Facebook Lite on Android, or log into Messenger on an Android device, you are given the option to continuously upload your contacts as well as your call and text history." Why FB needs users call and text history in first place? These privacy options are enabled by default when you install Massenger app and majority of the people are not aware of these privacy settings on their phones. And even if you alter a privacy setting on you phone then upon next update of the Massenger application it gets reset to defaults! And we all know the high frequency of app updates. It is like all of these are part of a bigger systemic issue and it smells foul play.

MikkoFinell 9y ago
They need call and text history to data mine so they can make money off of you by selling ads, and creating a psychological profile that will help make their products more intrusive.

ibdf 9y ago

I partially blame the Android permissions system. They are so generic you have no idea what you are giving permissions to. Permission in this case: "Allow INSERT APP NAME HERE to access your contacts?" Access what? Read access? Write access? Get all of their name and contact fields? Send them text messages? Call them? Spam? If I don't give them the access, what happens next? Can I not use the app? Will the app break? Will the app just ignore it? There's no information. If you google it for more information you will have to dig for it in some obscure google groups forum, and then yet it's not really clear. Because when you google for Android App Permissions you get results meant for Android Developers, and not normal human beings (jk about the normal human beings part).

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