Facebook is under the gun again after The New York Times revealed data sharing deals with 60 companies (including Apple) that gave over users’ education history, relationship status, work, religion and political leaning.
Facebook said it forged the partnerships back when mobile phones were less powerful and app stores did not yet exist, aiming to create device-integrated APIs [application programming interfaces], but the company only announced that it would wind them down in April.
This raises concerns about the company’s privacy protections and compliance with a 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission. Facebook allowed the device companies access to the data of users’ friends without their explicit consent, even after declaring that it would no longer share such information with outsiders. Some device makers could retrieve personal information even from users’ friends who believed they had barred any sharing, The New York Times found.
According to AppleInsider, an Apple spokesperson stated that Apple “relied on private access to Facebook data for features that enabled users to post photos to the social network without opening the Facebook app, among other things.” However, Apple cut off that access last September.
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