Not surprising for facebook, we had seen cookies tracking the activity of facebook users. But this one is on mobile where facebook intends to read your SMS using their app for mobile! This is now considered a great breach to privacy and the issue has been confirmed by Kaspersky Labs as well.
“Over the last few days there has been a constant scrutiny over Facebook having access to your SMS. Buried within the latest update for Facebook’s Android app is a feature that is causing growing concern among some users,” Kaspersky said in a statement today. The social media’s logic behind seeking access to SMS is that if you add a phone number to your account, this allows them to confirm your the number automatically by finding the confirmation code within a text message. This is the same technique used by various apps, including Whatsapp to verify your phone number at the time of installation.
The updated Facebook application now wants to read calendar events plus confidential information which it justifies as it is required to allow the app to show your calendar availability (based on your phone’s calendar) when you’re viewing an event on Facebook. “Two-factor authentication provides an extra level of security, so it’s good to see Facebook providing this option … As a final note, we’d urge people to carefully check the permissions requested by any app when you first install it,” Kaspersky Lab’s Principal Security Researcher David Emm said. Kaspersky added the permissions also grants access to multimedia messages, for which reason is not explicitly given.
Kaspersky mentions that Android still has control over how the permissions of the app are dealt. But the increasing encroachments on to privacy of users seems to be a concern. In response to the issue, facebook mentioned on the website : “Keep in mind that Android controls the way the permissions are named, and the way they’re named doesn’t necessarily reflect the way the Facebook app uses them. We realise that some of these permissions sound scary, so we’d like to provide more info about how we use them.”
So how many will be removing the facebook app from their phones? Please note that this is only part of the latest update on facebook App.
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| facebook's breach into privacy : Photo courtesy : ientry.com |
“Over the last few days there has been a constant scrutiny over Facebook having access to your SMS. Buried within the latest update for Facebook’s Android app is a feature that is causing growing concern among some users,” Kaspersky said in a statement today. The social media’s logic behind seeking access to SMS is that if you add a phone number to your account, this allows them to confirm your the number automatically by finding the confirmation code within a text message. This is the same technique used by various apps, including Whatsapp to verify your phone number at the time of installation.
The updated Facebook application now wants to read calendar events plus confidential information which it justifies as it is required to allow the app to show your calendar availability (based on your phone’s calendar) when you’re viewing an event on Facebook. “Two-factor authentication provides an extra level of security, so it’s good to see Facebook providing this option … As a final note, we’d urge people to carefully check the permissions requested by any app when you first install it,” Kaspersky Lab’s Principal Security Researcher David Emm said. Kaspersky added the permissions also grants access to multimedia messages, for which reason is not explicitly given.
Kaspersky mentions that Android still has control over how the permissions of the app are dealt. But the increasing encroachments on to privacy of users seems to be a concern. In response to the issue, facebook mentioned on the website : “Keep in mind that Android controls the way the permissions are named, and the way they’re named doesn’t necessarily reflect the way the Facebook app uses them. We realise that some of these permissions sound scary, so we’d like to provide more info about how we use them.”
So how many will be removing the facebook app from their phones? Please note that this is only part of the latest update on facebook App.
You can find the detailed explanation from Facebook at : https://www.facebook.com/help/210676372433246
We are happy, facebook for taking time to write this out, but this will no way justify the need to read text!
- Unknown Updated at: Tuesday, February 04, 2014
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