This morning, if you’re like me, you forgot it was a holiday, picked up your phone and were greeted by a Facebook app update. Not Messenger, but the actual Facebook app.
Merry Christmas from Facebook, right?
I decided to read the update before clicking “Accept,” and boy, am I glad I did.
We already knew Facebook had been pimping us out to anyone it could, monetizing each of us through our hobbies, interests and behavior.
Nothing is free. If you like using Facebook, you agree to let the company advertise to you. The better Facebook understands your activity, the more precisely it can target those ads.
That makes Facebook more valuable to advertisers. It also makes the information you provide more valuable to Facebook.
Facebook Wants Permission to Read Text Messages
This is the exchange. If you don’t like Facebook doing this, simply don’t use it. Or use it carefully.
Limit what the company knows about you by keeping your About page looking like a ghost town.
It’s that easy, and that is the beauty of the free market. No one is forcing you to use Facebook.
However, one permission in the Android app deserves a closer look.
Facebook is requesting permission to “read your text messages (SMS or MMS).” That gives the application technical access beyond activity taking place inside Facebook itself.
What the permission does not tell us is how broadly Facebook intends to use that access.
There is an important difference between an application having permission to read text messages and evidence that the company is collecting private conversations for advertising. The wording on the permission screen does not answer that question.
Still, less is more when it comes to privacy. Facebook already knows quite a bit about its users. I’m not eager to give it access to another source of personal information without a very good reason.
Facebook Already Receives Government Data Requests
There is another reason I’m inclined to be cautious.
Facebook is already receiving government requests for information about its users and their activity.
Earlier this year, the company released its first Global Government Requests Report. Facebook said governments around the world requested information involving thousands of user accounts during the first six months of 2013.
In the United States alone, Facebook reported between 11,000 and 12,000 requests involving between 20,000 and 21,000 users or accounts.
Facebook also said it scrutinizes those requests and pushes back when it considers them legally deficient or overly broad.
That does not mean Facebook is simply handing everybody’s information to the government. However, it is another reminder that information placed in the hands of a third party can eventually become interesting to somebody else.
Because the Android permission is so broad, I’m not comfortable approving it simply because Facebook would like me to.
I also find the timing amusing. Of all mornings to encounter a screen asking for more access to my phone, Christmas is a pretty good one for hoping I click “Accept” and get back to opening presents.
Was that intentional? I have no idea.
Either way, this Christmas morning I’ll be saying “No, thanks” to Facebook and its “gift.”
See Facebook’s Global Government Requests Report for its account of government requests for user data.