More news on Facebook: the way it handled Android call and SMS history
Recent accusations of data mishandling have been causing Facebook serious problems, regarding the Cambridge Analytica scandals and the 2016 Presidential Elections of the United States. Facebook has been accused of leaking its users’ data to third parties and the company has to answer some serious allegations about that.
But besides the Cambridge Analytica, there has been another news about the company and its aims to collect data on users. At the end of March articles about Facebook collecting Android call history and SMS data appeared.
If you have Facebook Messenger app installed on your Android device, chances are, that the company had been collecting your contacts, SMS, and call history data until late 2017.
The reasons for the acts are varying, but the main explanation to this not so well-known data collecting act is connected to the fact that in older versions of Android when permissions were a lot less strict, the Facebook app took away contact permission at the time of installation that allowed the company access to call and message data automatically.
After a while Google restricted Android permissions, making them more clear and granular by informing users whenever any app tries to execute permissions. However, developers were able to bypass this change, and Facebook continued accessing call and SMS data until October 2017.
If you are concerned about what data can be found about you on the social network, you can see what it has collected on you so far by going to your Facebook's Settings, then Download a copy of your Facebook data, then Start My Archive.
Apple users are safe from this incident, as IOS policies were stricter on not allowing silent access to user data.
If you want Facebook to stop storing and uploading your sensitive data to its server, there is a way to turn off the continuous uploading setting in the Messenger app. This change will also delete all your previously uploaded contacts from their servers.
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