New York Times: Facebook gave Netflix and Spotify access to private messages
The New York Times reports in a new revelation about Facebook that the social media company enabled Spotify, Netflix and the Royal Bank of Canada to view the private messages of Facebook users. This access to data was not sold, but in fact provided free of charge.
According to The New York Times, Spotify, Netflix and the Royal Bank of Canada were not only able to read the private messages, but also write and delete them. The companies could also see all participants in a chat group. These privileges are normally only available to service providers, which was not the case for the three companies. A Facebook spokesperson said there is no evidence that any of these Facebook partners abused the wider access.
The Royal Bank of Canada, Netflix and Spotify were able to gain access through a 2010 API built for a chat platform; Facebook Messenger didn’t exist then. Netflix and Spotify say they were not aware of the access and the Canadian bank denies having had access at all. Spotify still offers the possibility to share music via Facebook Messenger.
The American newspaper says it bases this information on internal documents, interviews with former Facebook employees and reports about yet unknown collaborations. This would have shown that many more companies were given access to data from Facebook users in some form.
It would involve more than 150 tech companies. For example, in return, Facebook could use contact lists from these partners, such as those of Amazon, Yahoo and Huawei. In this way, Facebook would have gained more insight into the contacts of users, so that they could be presented with more connections.
Apple allegedly had access to Facebook users’ contacts and calendar notes, even though users had turned off data sharing. Facebook allegedly provided Apple with the ability to disguise the fact that Apple devices requested data. Apple reports that it was not aware of this special access and that any part of the data remained on the used devices and was not available to third parties.
Microsoft also got more access than intended. Microsoft was given the opportunity to use the Bing search engine to see the names of almost all friends of Facebook users, even if permission was not given. Since 2017, the company along with Amazon and Sony have also been able to find out users’ email addresses through their friends. Microsoft says Bing used the data to build profiles of Facebook users on Microsoft servers. The Redmond-based company does not provide further details, but says the data was not used for advertising. Microsoft states that it has since removed this data.
Facebook also allegedly allowed Amazon to similarly obtain Facebook users’ names and contact information from their Facebook friends. This partnership with Amazon would now be terminated.