Did You Know That Facebook For Android Has Access To Your SMS And Other Private Info?
The Facebook application at the time of installation on Android mobile phones seeks certain permissions and the updated version now asks users to allow it "Read your text messages (SMS or MMS)".
By Sadho Ram — 04 Feb 2014, 01:37 PM — Updated almost 11 years ago
Cyber security firm Kaspersky claims that the latest Facebook app for Android wants to read user’s SMS and other confidential information
Social Networking giant Facebook is back in the soup once more. According to reports, the social networking site is looking to read personal texts and other private information of users on the Android mobile phone platform.
“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 on Monday.
The Android application has the capability to get access to SMSes you receive on your smartphone, revealed the report from Kaspersky
According to the report, a new feature that has been introduced with the latest update for the app is responsible for it. When you upgrade to the new version, the social network asks for certain permissions that include access to your SMS as well as MMS.
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While there was no immediate response from Facebook, here's what it says about the seeking access to SMS on its website
The social media’s logic behind seeking access to SMS is that “if you add a phone number to your account, this allows us to confirm your phone number automatically by finding the confirmation code that we send via text message“.
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”.
Facebook sends code via SMS that has to be entered when a user registers with the social media website which in a way helps the company verify the authenticity of users twice.
The report from Kaspersky added that the permissions also grants access to multimedia messages, for which reason is not explicitly given
“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.
firstpost.com
It expressed apprehension on the word ‘automatic’ used in the permission sought by Facebook.
“...the key, it seems to lie in the word ‘automatically’ Surely the app doesn’t need to do this automatically. Facebook could simply prompt me to type in the code manually. Or, at the very least, provide this option,” Kaspersky said.
It added that this may be an innocent feature “but in the light of growing concerns about online privacy, such an option would help to allay people’s fears”.
The permissions sought by Facebook are apart from similar permissions sought by Google’s Android platform in the name of Facebook
The social media company on its website said, “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.”
firstpost.com
On the issue of permission sought by Android to access information and edit feature in user’s phone, Google has earlier said, “Its an app which you (user) have choice of installing.”