Facebook’s device partnerships explained
On Sunday, news reports surfaced on deals between Facebook and device-makers that allowed the manufacturers broad access to Facebook user data over the last decade. As the debate about Facebook’s privacy practices unfolds, here is what we know about the c
Why would Facebook allow device-makers private access to user data?
Facebook officials said the company began forming device partnerships in 2007. The social network wanted to ensure that its services were available to Facebook users not only on desktop computers, but also anywhere else people used the internet: mobile phones, smart TVs, game consoles and other devices.
At the time, many phones could not run full-fledged Facebook apps. So Facebook allowed manufacturers to integrate elements of the social network — “like” buttons, photo sharing, friends lists — into their devices.
Are we just talking about the Facebook app on my phone?
No. Facebook has said that device partners use the private data access for both the Facebook app and other apps and integrations that it considers part of the “Facebook experience.” Some devices have apps that show Facebook messages in a social “hub” along with other messages. Others integrate Facebook status updates and friend information into the device’s own news feed. In some cases, the device pulls Facebook data into its own address books.
What does this have to do with Cambridge Analytica?
In 2014, the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica sought to build psychological profiles of American voters by exploiting Facebook data, such as the kinds of content people “liked” on Facebook. Only a few hundred thousand people gave Cambridge’s contractor access to their Facebook information, many of them through a third-party quiz app.
But under Facebook’s policies at the time, the app could retrieve data on all of the Facebook friends of those people — as many as 87 million in all, according to the social network.
Facebook has said in recent months that a Cambridge-like abuse could not have happened after 2015, when it imposed restrictions so users could choose which of their data their Facebook friends could share with third parties.
But reporting shows that Facebook continued to allow that kind of access to dozens of the world’s biggest tech and hardware companies — and only began shutting down the data-sharing partnerships after the Cambridge Analytica scandal erupted in March.
So can I stop my information from going to device-makers?
Unless you keep close track of which devices all of your Facebook friends are using at any given time, you won’t know which manufacturers have access to your data. You could adjust your settings to bar all outside apps from retrieving your data, but some device-makers, including BlackBerry, can override even that restriction. Short of deleting your account, the only way you can be sure your data is not shared with device-makers is to set all of your sharing settings to private — which would also prevent your friends from seeing the information.
Does this mean devicemakers are amassing giant stockpiles of Facebook data?
Facebook has said that some of the device partners store Facebook users’ — and their friends’ — data on their own servers. But Facebook has also said that regardless of where the information is stored, its partners are bound by strict contracts regarding the use of the data. That doesn’t mean the data is necessarily safe. One of the lessons of the Cambridge Analytica scandal is just how hard it is to control what happens to user data once it has left Facebook’s system.