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It shouldn’t be a surprise at this point that Facebook is caught up in yet another privacy scandal, but it’s still disappointing to know that absolutely nothing has changed. According to a recent New York Times report, the biggest social media network in the world agreed to give at least 60 device makers like Samsung and Apple access to its user data. This would be a direct violation of the 2011 agreement it made with the federal government if true.
According to the publication's article, Facebook had formed a partnership with dozens of companies in an effort to help them supposedly "recreate Facebook-like experiences" on their particular devices. However, this reportedly required access not only to the users on the social network itself but also to the friends of those users who may believe that they have prevented third parties from accessing their data.
The social media giant was quick to respond to the report, issuing a statement via a blog post that denied it was forcing access to users who have since barred anyone from accessing their information. Facebook was also adamant in claiming that none of the companies it had partnered with has been found to abuse this access.
“Partners could not integrate the user’s Facebook features with their devices without the user’s permission. And our partnership and engineering teams approved the Facebook experiences these companies built. Contrary to claims by the New York Times, friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible on devices when people made a decision to share their information with those friends. We are not aware of any abuse by these companies,” the blog post reads.
As NPR notes, a huge part of the issue that is being brought up is the application programming interfaces (API) that Facebook provided to these companies in order to make the integration of the social media site onto their devices easier. According to the social media giant, providing APIs to companies in this manner was just normal in the early days of smartphones.
