Facebook Reported to Have Handed Users' Private Data Over to 60 Device Makers

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Facebook has provided at least 60 device makers, including Apple, Microsoft and BlackBerry, with access to huge amounts of its users’ personal information over the last decade, media reported.

The New York Times found that the social networking service concluded data-sharing partnerships with device making companies to expand its reach and let them offer their clients popular Facebook features such as messaging and address books.

The social network allowed device companies access to the information of users’ friends without their permission, with some of the firms even being able to retrieve data of persons who thought they had banned any sharing, the newspaper reported on Sunday.

Although most of the partnerships are still in effect, Facebook started dissolving them in April in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Facebook has faced widespread outrage as it emerged in March that personal data of about 50 million of its users had been harvested by the Cambridge Analytica consultancy firm without their permission through a special app. The information was allegedly used to help target political advertising. In early April, Facebook estimated that the number of users affected by the data leak was around 87 million.

Facebook sent data to users of gadget manufacturers, media reported

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MOSCOW, June 4 (Itar-Tass) - RIA Novosti. Facebook over the past ten years has signed agreements on the transfer of social network users and their friends with at least 60 device manufacturers, including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung, the New York Times reported.

According to the newspaper, Facebook provided partner companies with access to data from users and their friends, even after declaring that they would no longer transmit such information to third parties. Most partnership agreements remain in force to this day, although in April, after a scandal with Cambridge Analytica, the company began to close such a partnership.

"It may seem that Facebook or the device manufacturer can be trusted, but the problem is that the more information is on the device, the more serious the threat of security and privacy, especially if other applications have access to this data," said a scientist at the University of California in Berkeley Serge Egelman (Serge Egelman), studying the safety of mobile applications.

Representatives of Facebook, interviewed by the publication, said that the practice of exchanging data with manufacturers of devices corresponds to the company's policy of protecting personal data and agreements with users. According to them, it was regulated by agreements that limited the use of these users. Facebook said they do not know of cases when companies "did not properly" use this information.

Earlier, the Attorney General of Massachusetts announced an investigation into Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, which, after receiving the data of 50 million Facebook users, collaborated with Donald Trump during the 2016 election in the United States.

Doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Grrrrr.