Facebook(FB), well known as the world’s number one social networking website has been marred by controversies in this whole year. And the latest happens to be a media report from New York Times (NYT) which says that the Mark Zuckerberg led company has been sharing its user data with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple Inc and Amazon without its users’ consent.
NYT says that its conclusion is based after a review of some classical info and interviewing of some of the top guys of the world’s largest technology companies.
Technically speaking, Facebook has always been screeching about data privacy right from the day of its inception.
But the latest report from NYT says that the company exempted its business partners from its rules for benefits best known to it.
Business analysts say that the company might be sharing its user data to make the products and services offered by its ‘partner companies’ more attractive.
For instance, Facebook is said to have shared the data of its users who were having access to Amazon services. This includes names and contact info of those using Amazon Prime- the movie streaming service and shopping on its retail platform. In the case of Microsoft, Zuckerberg’s company helped Bing Search Engine access to names of its users’ friends.
Coming to Apple Inc’s access to FB data, NYT report says that the iPhone maker was given the privilege to hide all indicators that the iOS device was asking for data on Facebook.
A spokesperson from Apple has condemned the news and said that the company was not aware of any such special access given by Facebook. But on condition of anonymity, a source from Apple reports that her company’s devices have a privilege of accessing the contact numbers and calendar entries of people who had changed their FB account settings to ‘Private’.
Meanwhile, popular American actress turned singer Cher,72, vowed to boycott Facebook and Google as they were conspiring with Russia to destroy the democracy of United States. The pop singer said that some more celebrities like her will follow her- probably early next year, surely influencing their fans and followers to do the same.
