A New York Times report accuses Facebook of sharing user data with device makers including Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and BlackBerry.
Facebook began working with these companies 10 years ago to help them build apps for their phones and tablets. The social network helped the companies integrate Facebook functionality into their operating systems. (For example, allowing users to share photos on the social network without visiting the Facebook app or website directly.) 
To make these integrations work, Facebook gave these companies access to user data through so-called private APIs.
The Times reported that the level of access Facebook gave the companies raises concerns about Facebook’s compliance with privacy laws. Facebook has denied the allegations, saying that the agreements it made with the companies were “strictly” controlled.
With a single connection, an application was able to grab data from almost 300,000 users!
The Times’s report, however, includes an example of how these private APIs access data. Using a 2013 BlackBerry smartphone, a journalist used his Facebook account to log into BlackBerry’s Hub software, which displays social network feeds of messages and emails. After logging in, the BlackBerry software was able to retrieve not only data from the journalist’s 556 Facebook friends, but also “identified information” belonging to about 300,000 friends of the journalist’s friends. The Times reports that this level of data sharing is contrary to Facebook’s current privacy policy. The report says that Facebook has made similar agreements with “at least 60 device manufacturers,” but it’s not clear what level of data access each company agreed to. Facebook’s main line of defense is that before users can connect to apps or services from device manufacturers, they must agree (or not) to sharing their data. However, as the Times reports, there are similarities between these agreements and the Cambridge Analytica scandal. In that scandal, it was revealed that third-party developers exploited Facebook’s lax privacy policies to collect vast amounts of data from the company’s platform. Facebook, of course, says the two events are “very different” and that sharing personal data with developers or marketing companies is not the same as sharing data with big tech companies. These companies, according to the largest social network, have the resources to protect information, and can be held accountable if they misuse the information for money. But what the Cambridge Analytica scandal has exposed is how easy it is for tech companies to distort the concept of consent by getting social media users to agree to share their data without really understanding what they’re agreeing to. In the case of Facebook and its manufacturers, we could ask whether users who signed up for the BlackBerry Hub software knew how much data would be left on their devices, or how that information would be used. When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before Congress in March, he stressed that his company gives users complete control over their data. However, “complete control” does not necessarily mean complete understanding. Image and information from theverge ________________________________
