| > The social network allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages. > The social network permitted Amazon to obtain users’ names and contact information through their friends, and it let Yahoo view streams of friends’ posts as recently as this summer, despite public statements that it had stopped that type of sharing years earlier. This information contrasts with a statement Facebook provided in 2018, stating that such data sharing partnerships ended at the end of 2015. That statement itself was correcting an earlier statement stating that such access had ended even earlier. From https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-shared-user-...: > Facebook shared personal information culled from its users' profiles with other companies after the date when executives have said the social network prevented third-party developers from gaining access to the data, the company confirmed Friday. > The companies had access to the data during a stretch of time in 2015 after Facebook had locked out most developers who build apps that work on its social network. Facebook gave select "whitelisted" companies extensions before they were also blocked from getting its users' personal information. > Those extensions expired before the end of 2015, Facebook said. The company believes the previously unreported extensions with a select group of companies is consistent with previous statements that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made, including in testimony to Congress, about shielding its 2.2 billion users' personal information from third parties since 2015. > "Any new 'deals', as the Journal describes them, involved people's ability to share their broader friends' lists — not their friends' private information like photos or interests," Ime Archibong, Facebook's vice president of product partnerships, said in a written statement. |