On the same day that Facebook bought ads in US and British newspapers to apologize for the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the social media site faced new questions about collecting telephone numbers and text messages from Android devices.
The Web site Ars Technica reported that users who checked data gathered by Facebook on them found that it had years of contact names, telephone numbers, call lengths and text messages.
Facebook on Sunday said the information is uploaded to secure servers and comes only from Android users who opt in to allow it.
Photo: AP
Spokeswomen said the data are not sold or shared with users’ friends or outside apps. They said the data is used “to improve people’s experience across Facebook” by helping to connect with others.
The company also said in a Web site posting that it does not collect the content of text messages or calls.
A spokeswoman said that Facebook uses the information to rank contacts in Messenger so they are easier to find and to suggest people to call.
Users get the option to allow data collection when they sign up for Messenger or Facebook Lite, the Facebook posting said.
“If you chose to turn this feature on, we will begin to continuously log this information,” the posting said.
The data collection can be turned off in a user’s settings, and all previously collected call and text history shared on the app would be deleted, Facebook said.
The feature was first introduced on Facebook Messenger in 2015 and added later to Facebook Lite.
Messages were left on Sunday seeking comment about security from Google officials, who make the Android operating system.
Reports of the data collection came as Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg took out ads in multiple US and British Sunday newspapers to apologize for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The ads said the social media platform does not deserve to hold personal information if it cannot protect it.
According to the ads, a quiz app built by a Cambridge University researcher leaked Facebook data of millions of people four years ago.
This was a “breach of trust” and Facebook was taking steps to make sure it does not happen again, Zuckerberg said.
Facebook’s privacy practices have come under fire after Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm affliated with US President Donald Tump, got data inappropriately.
Its stock value has dropped more than US$70 billion since the revelations were first published.
Among the papers with the ads were the New York Times and the Washington Post in the US, and the Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph in the UK.
The ads said Facebook is limiting the data apps received when users sign in. It was also investigating every app that had access to large amounts of data, it said.
“We expect there are others. And when we find them, we will ban them and tell everyone affected,” the ads said.
Cambridge Analytica got the data from a researcher who paid 270,000 Facebook users to complete a psychological profile quiz in 2014, but the quiz gathered data on their friends as well, bringing the total number of people affected to about 50 million.
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