Facebook's Android App Collected Call Logs, SMS Related Info From Installed Phones For Years
After all the hue and cry about Facebook's alleged data leak, A guy from New Zealand found something distressing as he was analyzing his Facebook data: Facebook had about two years worth of phone call metadata from his Android phone, including names.
In the wake of Facebook's massive data breach and its crisis of credibility, thanks to Cambridge Analytica, a lot of startling revelations are coming to light.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized, but it was hardly enough. The online mood is against the social media giant, which boasts of over 2 billion users around the world, and it was underscored recently by a New Zealander's shocking discovery.
Reuters
Dylan McKay from New Zealand was looking through all the data that Facebook had collected from him -- thanks to an archive that Facebook itself lets user's download through their website, if they're interested. While going through the information Facebook had stored about him, Dylan also found two years worth of incoming and outgoing call logs from his Android phone.
What was especially distressing to him was the fact that this data included names, phone numbers, and the length of each call made or received.
Downloaded my facebook data as a ZIP file
¡ª Dylan McKay (@dylanmckaynz) March 21, 2018
Somehow it has my entire call history with my partner's mum pic.twitter.com/CIRUguf4vD
Dylan McKay's case isn't unique. This experience is shared and has been reported by a lot of Facebook users on Android, according to an Ars Technica report.
The data Facebook collected from its Android user base was found to have call-log data, along with SMS and MMS message metadata, usually dating back to a couple of years or even more.
So what exactly is going on here?
You see Facebook uses a person's phone-contacts to help recommend potential friends they may have on Facebook. Facebook Messenger on Android even explicitly requests a user's permission to access call logs and SMS logs on Android and Facebook Lite devices.
Mashable
But here's the interesting bit: even if you or any user didn't give that permission to Messenger, Facebook's mobile apps still got to collect all that data, because how Android handled permissions for looking up call logs in the past.
If you had granted Facebook permission to read your contacts through its Android app a few years ago, especially on Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean), that permission also allowed Facebook to access your call and message logs by default. This is Android's fault.
Lesson learned? Don't let Facebook or any other app access to your address book, contacts list or SMS messages, if you're conscious about your privacy.
ALSO READ: 10 Points That Show How Facebook Got Played And 50 Million Users Had Their Privacy Violated
