

Facebook spies on phone users' text messages, report says  - veyron
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/facebook-spies-on-phone-users-text-messages-report-says/story-e6frfku0-1226282017490

======
mortenjorck
Ok. We have a huge, detail-free set of accusations here, in a high-profile
newspaper blogspam whose source link doesn't link to an actual story, only to
the home page of the publication it's referencing.

We're going to need a lot more here.

~~~
alexobenauer
That's exactly what I thought.

Especially, too, since you cannot do this on iOS with public API's (and I
assume even with private, but I could be wrong). Even if you did find a
loophole, Apple wouldn't allow it, and they'd close it.

And even on Android, don't you have to enable an app's access to your SMS
messages?

This article had no details. It was way too short for the accusations made.

------
Shank
I'm going to note that ZDNet got a reply from Facebook that completely denies
the claim. The article in question was making the claim based on the
permissions that Facebook requests on Android, and not actual evidence.

[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/facebook-youtube-others-
accuse...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/facebook-youtube-others-accused-of-
reading-text-messages/70237)

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Although bogus, maybe this story has some benefit then. Perhaps app developers
will stop asking for the kitchen sink, so permissions are remotely useful
again.

------
leoedin
I have an app (Prey) on my android phone that _does_ have SMS access (to check
for "trigger" texts to enable tracking). When I first installed the app (and
every few months subsequently), I've been prompted to allow the app access to
my incoming SMSs.

Facebook has never caused that prompt to come up.

Assuming FB aren't doing anything really weird, I think it's fair to say that
the Facebook android app on my phone _doesn't_ have access to my texts.

------
Turing_Machine
I could be wrong, but as far as I know iOS doesn't allow third-party
applications to access/intercept text messages, while Android does.

~~~
mike-cardwell
There is an Android permission that an application can request and a user can
grant which allows applications to read SMS.

------
fractalcat
Seems like the only evidence they have is application permissions and an
unspecified 'admission' from Facebook (who?), while according to zdnet,
Facebook denies ever accessing user text messages:
[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/facebook-youtube-others-
accuse...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/facebook-youtube-others-accused-of-
reading-text-messages/70237)

------
shirro
Brought to you by the company that spied on peoples phone calls for years.
Facebook may or may not be doing what News actually got caught red handed
doing.

See these piratey Internet companies are evil; buy more gossip sheets now.
Find out which celebrities may or may not be doing it and why global warming
is a lefty conspiracy. Read all about it!

------
jschuur
One Facebook employee's rather frank denial of this:
<https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10151330596285363>

------
artursapek
God, I know this is pretty unrelated, but the stock photos used in news
articles seem to be getting worse all the time.

------
mike-cardwell
Just FYI, if you have a rooted Android phone and install the free application
"LBE Privacy Guard", you can block apps from accessing your SMS store, even if
they've been granted permissions. I believe that by default it displays an
empty SMS store to such apps. It does loads of similar things.

------
Iroiso
How far is Facebook willing to go to control the social fabric of the internet
!?, Scary...

~~~
gst
I don't see anything scary. Nobody forces you to use Facebook (I very very
seldom use it).

Most of its users don't care about their own privacy, so why should Facebook
care about it's users privacy?

