It looks like, Facebook is again under fire for collecting people’s call logs and SMS history for years. According to the reports, the said data was discovered by many Android users after they obtained the offline copy of their Facebook Data. Well, it’s worth to note that, earlier, it was said that Facebook did so without asking the users. But according to Facebook’s latest blog post, it’s not true. Facebook said that logging of call logs and SMS history was “a part of an opt-in feature for people using Messenger or Facebook Lite on Android”
Facebook actually gathers call logs and SMS history after the user agrees to enable the contact sharing feature in Facebook Lite or Messenger which happens during the sign-in process or later in the apps. According to the company, the collected data is used to improve the experience for the people. However, the company hasn’t mentioned exactly what kind of experience they are talking about. On the other hand, the company claims that they never sell this data and the actual content of the texts or calls isn’t uploaded to their servers. Facebook also argues that it’s a common thing for social networking apps and services to deploy contact importers “as a way to more easily find the people you want to connect with” However, if you are holding an iPhone, then the data collection isn’t possible because of Apple’s strict privacy & policies. It has been possible only on Android because the permissions weren’t that strict in the past. So, the number of ways Facebook is using to gather user data is enough to creep anyone out. So, what do you think about this? Share your views in the comment box below.
