Facebook ‘Data Sharing’ Could Make
Cambridge Analytica Look Small
‘Data Sharing’ Could Make Cambridge Analytica Look Small
By Jack Davis
June 4, 2018 at 6:52am
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A major online privacy scandal is brewing amid a new report claiming Facebook gave personal information its users thought was private to a wide range of companies that make electronic devices.
Facebook “formed data-sharing partnerships” with 60 companies including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung, The New York Times reported Sunday.
“It’s like having door locks installed, only to find out that the locksmith also gave keys to all of his friends so they can come in and rifle through your stuff without having to ask you for permission,” said Ashkan Soltani, a research and privacy consultant who used to serve as chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission.
Facebook, however, said neither it nor the companies with which it formed partnerships did anything wrong.
In a post on Facebook’s blog, the company’s vice president of product partnerships reiterated the social media giant’s stance that the device-integrated application programming interfaces were controlled tightly.
“Partners could not integrate the user’s Facebook features with their devices without the user’s permission. And our partnership and engineering teams approved the Facebook experiences these companies built,” Ime Archibong, a Facebook vice president, wrote on the company’s blog.
Archibong said the partnerships had limited access and only allowed companies to see how Facebook worked on the devices they were building.
“These partners signed agreements that prevented people’s Facebook information from being used for any other purpose than to recreate Facebook-like experiences,” he wrote.
“We are not aware of any abuse by these companies,” Archibong added.