Facebook denies taking SMS, call data without permission
Its privacy scandal is deepening after reporters revealed the company logged phone data. It says it would never sell sensitive information—and it’s trying to change the subject.
The other shoe might have just dropped for Facebook.
The company has been defending itself against claims that it funneled users’ private data—without their permission—to app developers, leading to the use of the data by Cambridge Analytica in several recent elections.
After apologizing and working overtime to allay consumer fears, Facebook is now defending its use of data scraped from calls and texts sent on Android phones.
Facebook uses phone-contact data as part of its friend recommendation algorithm. And in recent versions of the Messenger application for Android and Facebook Lite devices, a more explicit request is made to users for access to call logs and SMS logs on Android and Facebook Lite devices. But even if users didn’t give that permission to Messenger, they may have given it inadvertently for years through Facebook’s mobile apps—because of the way Android has handled permissions for accessing call logs in the past.
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