This "fact check" contradicts several details Ars found in analysis of Facebook data downloads and testimony from users who provided the data. More on the Facebook response is appended to the end of the original article below. This past week, a New Zealand man was looking through the data Facebook had collected from him in an archive he had pulled down from the social networking site. While scanning the information Facebook had stored about his contacts, Dylan McKay discovered something distressing: Facebook also had about two years' worth of phone call metadata from his Android phone, including names, phone numbers, and the length of each call made or received.
Somehow it has my entire call history with my partner's mum pic. This experience has been shared by a number of other Facebook users who spoke with Ars, as well as independently by us—my own Facebook data archive, I found, contained call-log data for a certain Android device I used in and , along with SMS and MMS message metadata. In response to an email inquiry by Ars about this data gathering, a Facebook spokesperson replied, "The most important part of apps and services that help you make connections is to make it easy to find the people you want to connect with.
So, the first time you sign in on your phone to a messaging or social app, it's a widely used practice to begin by uploading your phone contacts. The spokesperson pointed out that contact uploading is optional and installation of the application explicitly requests permission to access contacts.
Facebook logs SMS texts and calls, users find as they delete accounts
And users can delete contact data from their profiles using a tool accessible via Web browser. Facebook uses phone-contact data as part of its friend recommendation algorithm. And in recent versions of the Messenger application for Android and Facebook Lite devices, a more explicit request is made to users for access to call logs and SMS logs on Android and Facebook Lite devices. But even if users didn't give that permission to Messenger, they may have given it inadvertently for years through Facebook's mobile apps—because of the way Android has handled permissions for accessing call logs in the past.
For Facebook's instructions on turning off continuous contact uploading, go here. If you granted permission to read contacts during Facebook's installation on Android a few versions ago—specifically before Android 4. The permission structure was changed in the Android API in version But until the "Marshmallow" version of Android, even with split permissions, all permissions could still be presented all at once, without users getting the option to decline them individually.
So Facebook and other applications could continue to gain access to call and SMS data with a single request by specifying an earlier Android SDK version. Starting with Marshmallow, users could toggle these permissions separately themselves. But as many as half of Android users worldwide remain on older versions of the operating system because of carrier restrictions on updates or other issues.
Apple iOS has never allowed access to call log data by third-party apps, overt or silently, so this sort of data acquisition was never possible.
Facebook provides a way for users to purge collected contact data from their accounts, but it's not clear if this deletes just contacts or if it also purges call and SMS metadata. After purging my contact data, my contacts and calls were still in the archive I downloaded the next day—likely because the archive was not regenerated for my new request. The cached archive was generated once and not updated on the second request.
However, two days after a request to delete all contact data, the contacts were still listed by the contact management tool. While Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg was apologizing for giving Russian-linked Cambridge Analytica access to over 50 million US Facebook users' personal data, news broke that Facebook had been scraping call and text message data from Android phones for years. If you looked closely, you would have seen Zuckerberg and company had been snooping on Facebook 's billion-plus users since the beginning.
Indeed, the company's entire business model is built on profiting from your personal data. Facebook's privacy blunder 'so dire' we need regulations.
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Samsung Galaxy Note 9: Rumors, features, price, and release date. That's not news, but we're only now realizing just how deeply Facebook data mines each of us including our phone call and text messaging records. Tech site Ars Technica cited several users who discovered that if you used an Android phone and installed the Facebook app, the social network was likely logging your phone calls and text messages metadata ever since the Android app's inception.
How to hack someones text messages without them knowing?
By metadata, that means Facebook was tracking when you called, how long you were on the call, and when you texted. Facebook never had access to the content.
- How to Spy on Messenger on Facebook.
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- There Is a Easy Ways to Spy on Calls Secretly.
- Facebook logs SMS texts and calls, users find as they delete accounts | Technology | The Guardian.
For example, Facebook could know you called your mom every Saturday evening, but not what you spoke about. It appears Facebook could never pull this off on Apple's iOS. Another social network, the obscure Path, pulled down its users' contact information without permission years ago. Path apologized for this and deleted the data. Even as Facebook apologizes for its privacy invasions , the social networking giant isn't going that far. On Android, the door was left open for Facebook to easily pull down your data via Android's early application programming interface, or API.
Before the launch of Android 6.
- Categories.
- Facebook data: Phone call logs, texts tracked by social media giant.
- Download your call and text history.
- Fact Check: Your Call and SMS History.
- Fact Check: Your Call and SMS History | Facebook Newsroom.
- Facebook scraped call, text message data for years from Android phones [Updated].
In Facebook's case, the company asked for the moon -- access to all your data including your phone usage. Now when you install an application you must explicitly grant access to specific areas. You can also revoke these permissions. You may want to share your contacts with Facebook, but I'm hard pressed to think of a reason why you'd want Facebook to know about who and when you called or texted someone. Then, click on each app.
What is an app I can use to spy on text messages?
On the App info screen, you'll see a "Permissions" category. From here, click on "Permissions". The next window lists all the permissions for the app. Be aware, some apps won't work without specific permissions. You didn't specifically grant Facebook the right to keep an eye on your phones and texts, so you're good, right?
Facebook apps kept using the older, but still supported pre-Android 4. This gave Facebook access to your call and message logs by default. Google finally deprecated the Android 4. After that, Facebook no longer automatically pulled down your logs.
See your call and text history - Project Fi Help
Whether you're running an ancient phone with an old version of Android or a brand new Pixel 2 with Android 8. It doesn't hurt to be cautious. In a statement, Facebook stated: Notice how they're talking about contacts, but not explicitly about your calling and texting history. If you follow their links, you're taken to a page that describes how to handle contacts for Messenger and the Facebook app.