Facebook: We read all messages
MARK Zuckerberg has said that Facebook reads the content of all its users’ private messages.
The Facebook CEO, who is to appear before senior politicians in the US next week, said the contents of messages sent via Messenger were scanned to ensure they are in line with the social network’s community standards.
He said: ‘Our systems detect what’s going on.’
FACEBOOK scans pictures and texts that users send each other on its Messenger app, the firm’s boss Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed.
It came as the US giant admitted that an extra 37million users may have had their privacy compromised in the data sharing row that has engulfed it.
Chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer said the personal information of up to 87million users may have been shared with the British political consultancy Cambridge Analytica – up from an earlier estimate of 50million. Most of those affected were in the US, he added in a corporate blog post.
Mr Zuckerberg, who is to appear before senior politicians in the US next week to answer questions about his network’s use of personal data, said the contents of messages sent via Messenger were scanned to ensure they are in line with Facebook’s community standards.
He cited an example when one user tried to refer to ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. ‘In that case, our systems detect what’s going on,’ the billionaire told the website Vox. ‘We stop those messages from going through.’
The latest revelations have fuelled concerns about snooping by Facebook, whose users’ personal information of users wrongly ended up in the hands of Cambridge Analytica, which worked on US President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign. One Twitter user, Kevin Chastain, claims to have experienced Messenger texts being used to target advertising, tweeting: ‘So I was messaging my wife about dinner tonight mentioned a particular place on Facebook messenger and then opened up Facebook about to see an ad for that restaurant. Tell me they aren’t in on every convo [conversation] I have. Scary!’
A Facebook spokesman said: ‘On Messenger, when you send a photo, our automated systems scan it using photo matching technology to detect known child exploitation imagery or when you send a link, we scan it for malware or viruses. Facebook designed these automated tools so we can rapidly stop abusive behaviour on our platform.’