Another scandal against Facebook
When he stood before the US Congress last April, after another scandal against Facebook, the creator of the popular platform, Mark Zuckerberg, was categorical: "We do not sell data to anyone."
While this may be typically true, a new New York Times article today revealed that Facebook has given 150 companies, including Silicon Valley giants Microsoft and Amazon, access to data from hundreds of millions of users. ignorance of the latter and without their consent.
According to internal documents obtained by the newspaper, the volume of data obtained by Cambridge Analytica from a Facebook application pales in comparison to the "free" given to some of the biggest partners of the protagonist of social media, such as Amazon, Spotify and Netflix.
According to the article, Facebook enabled Netflix, Spotify and Royal Bank of Canada, among others, to read, write or even delete user text messages, and see all participants in a thread, privileges far exceeding the requirements for integrating Facebook into their systems.
Zuckerberg's company also allowed the Microsoft search engine, known as Bing, to "see" the names of all the friends of a Facebook user, without his consent.
Amazon was able to extract their usernames and contact information through their friends, while Yahoo was even able to watch stream views from friends' posts.
Since last year, Sony, Microsoft and Amazon have been able to learn users 'email addresses through their friends' accounts.
Facebook never received any money for providing this type of access, even if users had disabled all data sharing features on their profile. The company claims that these large companies simply acted as an extension of Facebook. In this context, any information that a user shared with his friends on the site could then be disclosed to the above companies, without his consent.
Facebook denied on Tuesday night that the aforementioned companies had abused users' data, although it declined to mention the amount of data offered on the plate to its affiliates. "Facebook partners cannot ignore users' privacy settings and it is wrong to claim that they do," said Steve Sutherfield, director of Facebook's Privacy and Privacy Policy.
Sutherfield also told the Times that none of Facebook partners had violated the 2011 Consent Agreement, which was signed between the platform and the Federal Trade Commission, and made it clear that users' consent would be required to share any of their information with others. companies.
However, the report claims that Facebook has entered into data-sharing agreements with many large companies and banks, agreements that have helped it attract new users and - consequently - increase its advertising revenue.