> Why is it surprising or even remotely controversial that an app that people explicitly authorized to access their messages (informed consent) then proceeded to access their messages? The app didn't have access to friends' messages, so I don't see what the issue is here, other than yet another clickbait headline.
I'm not sure if we have enough details to say if this was informed consent or not.
But I doubt it was informed consent if the messages were gathered by the Facebook app. Back when I had that app installed, Android did not support granular privacy. One day I got an update notification that said a new update would get the permission to read text messages. I believe the rational was so the app could automatically parse a text message confirmation code. Since I'm savvy, I never installed that update or any other update it ever again. Now it turns out Facebook used that permission to slurp up people's text messages into it profile of them.
This wasn't informed consent: I wasn't honestly told what they would use the permission for, the request wasn't clear (just the standard android notice), and it was an all or nothing ask.
I'm not sure if we have enough details to say if this was informed consent or not.
But I doubt it was informed consent if the messages were gathered by the Facebook app. Back when I had that app installed, Android did not support granular privacy. One day I got an update notification that said a new update would get the permission to read text messages. I believe the rational was so the app could automatically parse a text message confirmation code. Since I'm savvy, I never installed that update or any other update it ever again. Now it turns out Facebook used that permission to slurp up people's text messages into it profile of them.
This wasn't informed consent: I wasn't honestly told what they would use the permission for, the request wasn't clear (just the standard android notice), and it was an all or nothing ask.