Facebook has been under fire recently for the election-influencing data breach situation created by Cambridge Analytica. But it appears the troubles have not stopped as a software developer discovers that Facebook has been scraping his calls and text metadata.
Downloaded my facebook data as a ZIP file
Somehow it has my entire call history with my partner’s mum pic.twitter.com/CIRUguf4vD
— Dylan McKay (@dylanmckaynz) March 21, 2018
In Dylan McKay’s screenshot, it looks like Facebook got a hold of the duration of the call, the type of call, the time it started and even the name of the person you were calling. This data scraping has also been confirmed by Ars Technica.
However, it looks like Facebook didn’t get access to that data on purpose. Instead, they got a hold of it because of the way Android handles permissions for accessing call logs in the past. Ars Technica reports that if you’ve granted permissions for Facebook to read your contact data before Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, it gives Facebook access to call and message logs by default.
This was later changed in the Android API (version 16) but apps could still bypass it if it was granted permission in an earlier version until Google deprecated Android API version 4.0 in October 2017, which means the problem has been fixed. iOS users, on the other hand, were never affected because Apple doesn’t allow silent access to call data.
Curious, I checked my own Facebook data and found that yes, Facebook also has my call history recorded alongside my contact information despite the fact that I don’t recall explicitly granting the app permission to that.
You can check your own data by heading to Facebook on the desktop, clicking the little downward arrow and going to Settings > General and clicking on the “Download a copy of your Facebook data”. That will give you a ZIP folder which you can extract. Then in the folder “html” click on “contact_info.htm” and scroll down.
In response to this, Facebook issued a statement that they were not stealing your information. They said that call and text history logging is part of an opt-in feature for people using Messenger or Facebook Lite on Android. People have to expressly agree to use the feature before Facebook gets access to that data.
Facebook also added that people can opt-out of this data logging in the Facebook app (Facebook Lite).
But like I said earlier, I don’t remember ever giving permission to Facebook to log my call data yet they have my call and SMS information from 2016. It just shows how many of us have actually granted permission to apps like Facebook without really knowing the kind of data they’ll be collecting. Thankfully, it looks like Facebook doesn’t have the actual content of the information which I guess is a small win.
What do you guys think about this? Let me know in the comments below!
