Facebook has been collecting the call history & SMS data from Android devices

Facebook has been collecting the call history & SMS data from Android devices

www.zentrade.online.com

Facebook has been collecting call records & SMS data from Android devices.

Most of the Twitter users have reported that they finds months or years of call history data in their downloadable Facebook data file. A number of Facebook users have been spooked by the recent Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, prompting them to download all the data that Facebook stores on their Account.

imyfone.com

Facebook or its App has been requesting access to contacts, SMS data, call history on Android devices to improve its friend recommendation algorithm and distinguish between business contacts and your true personal friendships. Facebook appears to be gathering this data through its Messenger application, which often prompts Android users to take over as the default SMS client. Facebook has been offering an option-in prompt that produces users with a big blue button to “continuously upload” contact data, including call and text history. It’s not clear when this prompt started appearing in relation to the historical data gathering, and whether it has simply been opt-in the whole time. 

Either way, it’s clearly alarmed some who have found call history data stored on Facebook’s servers.

Developers could bypass this and continue accessing call and SMS data until Google deprecated the old Android API.

bgr.com

On I-Phone

Call record & SMS data collection has not yet been discovered on iOS or Apple devices. While Apple does allow some specialist apps to access this data in limited ways like blocking spam calls or texts, these apps have to be specifically enabled through a process that’s similar to enabling third-party keyboards. The majority of iOS apps cannot access call history or SMS messages. Facebook’s iOS app is not able to capture this data on an iPhone

tribune.com.pk

Facebook has altered its privacy controls in recent years to prevent such an event occurring again, but the company is facing a backlash of criticism over the inadequate privacy controls that allowed this to happen. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also been summoned to explain how data was taken without users’ consent to a UK Parliamentary committee.