Facebook collected call and SMS data from Android users if not explicitly forbidden

After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook made the headlines again, the company collected users’ Android call and SMS metadata for years.

The Cambridge Analytica case it raised the discussion about the power of social networks and the possibility of their abuse for the conditioning of political activities.
The non-professionals have discovered how important their digital experience is and how companies specialized in data analysis operate without their knowledge.

In January, the popular Italian expert Simone Margaritelli wrote a blog post (Italian) on Medium inviting users to uninstall  Facebook and Whatsapp.

Mat Johnson, a Professor at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, also made the same disturbing discovery.

The Cambridge Analytica case has is giving users another point of view regarding the collection of such kind of data made by Facebook and the real way they are using for.

A Facebook spokesperson explained that the platform collects this data to improve the users’ experience.

“This [above] screen in the Messenger application offers to conveniently track all your calls and messages. But Facebook was already doing this surreptitiously on some Android devices until October 2017, exploiting the way an older Android API handled permissions.” wrote Sean Gallagher, Ars Technica’s IT and National Security Editor.

“Facebook began explicitly asking permission from users of Messenger and Facebook Lite to access SMS and call data to “help friends find each other” after being publicly shamed in 2016 over the way it handled the “opt-in” for SMS services. That message mentioned nothing about retaining SMS and call data, but instead it offered an “OK” button to approve “keeping all of your SMS messages in one place.””

Facebook denied to collect call data surreptitiously with an official blog post, the social network giant highlighted that it never commercialized the data and that users are in total control of the data uploaded to the platform.

“When you sign up for Messenger or Facebook Lite on Android, or log into Messenger on an Android device, you are given the option to continuously upload your contacts as well as your call and text history.” reads the blog post published by Facebook. “For Messenger, you can either turn it on, choose ‘learn more’ or ‘not now’. On Facebook Lite, the options are to turn it on or ‘skip’. If you chose to turn this feature on, we will begin to continuously log this information, which can be downloaded at any time using the Download Your Information tool.”

Users can check data collected by Facebook going to your Facebook Settings→Download a copy of your Facebook data→Start My Archive.

iOS users are not affected by this issue.

Lesson leaned … every time we use an app it is essential to carefully read the documentation that details its work.