"Facebook confirms it records call history, stoking privacy furor"

#deletefacebook isn't going away.

by Ben Popken / Mar.26.2018 / 9:54 AM ET

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during the annual Facebook F8 developers conference in San Jose, California on April 18, 2017.Stephen Lam / Reuters file

The FTC is the latest bad news to slam Facebook, announcing Monday that it was launching a non-public probe into the social media giant's privacy practices.
"The FTC is firmly and fully committed to using all of its tools to protect the privacy of consumers," Tom Pahl, Acting Director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement. "The FTC takes very seriously recent press reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook."
Facebook has been on the back heel ever since the Cambridge Analytica revelations became public, with outcry growing and legislators calling for CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify on Capitol Hill.
Besides its declining stock price, consumer sentiment seems to be turning against Facebook. An Axios-commissioned Survey Monkey poll shows that its favorability has declined since October by 28 points, nearly double that of all the other tech giants.
The #deletefacebook hashtag has continued to flourish on social media as customers strike out against the social media company, with tech billionaire Elon Musk bringing further visibility to the movement last week when he deleted the Facebook page for two of his companies, Tesla and SpaceX.
It's not clear, however, how many other users are actually taking the plunge and disconnecting themselves from the world's largest social media platform — which for some users constitutes the majority of their online experience.
There was also indication that automated bot networks were participating in amplifying the hashtag.
On Sunday Illinois became the first state to file a lawsuit against Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, alleging a "fraudulent scheme to harvest the data of millions of American voters."
"This kind of mass data collection was not only allowed but encouraged by Facebook, which sought to keep developers building on its platform and provide companies with all the tools they need to influence and manipulate user behavior," the lawsuit said. "That’s because Facebook is not a social media company; it is the largest data mining operation in existence."
That same day, Facebook confirmed that it has been keeping texting and call logs for millions of people who use Android phones to access Facebook Messenger, adding to a growing backlash over how the company handles the user data that drives its record-setting profits.
Ever since news broke that data firm Cambridge Analytica had been abusing the Facebook platform to download unauthorized data on over 50 million users, users have been downloading their own Facebook data to see just how much the social network knows about them.
One of them was developer Dylan McKay, who posted last week that his file appeared to show a call log of every single call he'd made for the past few years. The data included who the call was to or from, the date, time and duration. The calls were not made using Facebook or one of its apps, they were just the calls he'd made on his phone.

As the tweet went viral, other users replied that they were seeing their same call history recorded in the data.
On Sunday the social networking giant confirmed that it had been recording the call history, and attempted to tamp down some of the criticism by emphasizing that the affected users had opted in to the process.
"Call and text history logging is part of an opt-in feature for people using Messenger or Facebook Lite on Android," the company wrote. "This helps you find and stay connected with the people you care about, and provides you with a better experience across Facebook."
Once enabled, the Messenger app begins "to continuously upload your contacts as well as your call and text history."

Read more:https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/facebook-confirms-it-records-call-history-stoking-privacy-furor-n860006


See? SEE? SEE?

I said from the start that Facebook is evil.  Everyone accused me of being a spoil sport.  Now all your shit is out there and you can't get it back.  I never used my real name on Facebook and never gave them any real information.