Facebook back on the ropes with more privacy punches

Facebook faces fresh questions surrounding data privacy, with reports emerging it granted advertising customers access to user’s private messages with friends and family.

This is a company which is not helping itself but is looking increasingly suspect. The data and sharing economy does of course require users to make an exchange in order to receive free services, but the personalised advertising machine created by Facebook is starting to look scary. The detail which is known on users, and the apparent nonchalant approach the firm has to abuse of the platform, is starting to become very worrying.

Now we have one of the most worrying accusations. According to the New York Times, new documents have emerged suggesting Facebook granted permissions to advertisers which seemingly go far beyond the consent granted by users.

Among the accusations, sourced from internal documents, Netflix and Spotify were given the ability to read user’s private messages, while Bing was able to access all information about a user’s connections without specific consent. Amazon was given permission to obtain contact information through indirect connections, and Yahoo was allowed view streams of friends’ posts. The Yahoo partnership can be traced back to this summer, long after Facebook had declared such practises had been ended.

Aside from the NYT investigation, one user has also taken the time to pen her frustrations after realising location controls on the platform made no difference to personalised advertising. Aleksandra Korolova turned off all available location services on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, cleared location details off her profile, removed geo-tagging on photos, but was still receiving personalised ads based on recent movements.

“Reading Facebook’s explanations to advertisers provides insight into how this is done,” said Korolova in a Medium post. “Specifically, Facebook tells advertisers that it learns user locations from the IP address, WiFi and Bluetooth data.”

The illusion of control has been created, though Facebook is finding ways around user consent and loopholes to any commitments it has previously made.

The inability for Facebook to be transparent, clearly telling the user what is going on, is incredible. There are so many examples of this company misleading the general public, governments and regulators, they are becoming difficult to count. This is a toxic company which should not be trusted. We are struggling to believe any statement which the company is now making.

In response, Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Director of Developer Platforms and Programs, has gone to Facebook’s standard response.

“…we recognize that we’ve needed tighter management over how partners and developers can access information using our APIs,” said Papamiltiadis. “We’re already in the process of reviewing all our APIs and the partners who can access them.”

This seems to be Facebook’s new response to accusations which question whether it has acted ethically or legally; partially accepting responsibility and saying they will do better in the future. This is not a good enough answer anymore. It might have worked the first couple of times, but the repetition from Facebook executives just shows how little the company thinks about the general public. We are just assets to be traded in the pursuit of greater advertising revenues.

Privacy is a small hurdle; the grey expanses of technology regulation are too wide for this to be a problem. Facebook is making a mockery of the general public and the data privacy landscape.