Facebook has denied reports that it is spying on users is spying text messages and other personal data sent from users’ smartphones.
The claims came in a report in the Sunday Times, saying Facebook is foremost among mobile app companies that are using permissions obtained when users download apps to access and read text, intercept phone calls and track users’ locations.
It said terms and conditions associated with the downloads can give developers the right to read short message service texts on devices and memory cards.
Facebook said it is not reading text messages from the Facebook app for Google’s Android smartphones and is not mining data for market research firms.
Rather, it said the request for permission to read text messages was to allow the app to read and write data between itself and the phone’s short text message service feature.
It said the move was part of a “limited” trial before launch of its own messaging service that may lead Facebook, with more than 800 million users, to make use of the permissions granted by customers when they download apps.
Iain Mackenzie, a Facebook spokesman in the U.K., called the Times report “a ludicrous attempt to cook-up a story about companies spying on users — spun out of our explanation that we declared the app permission to everyone even though
we’re only using it with selected people who know the score.”
He said if Facebook launches its messaging service, user permission will be required before the feature will become active.
The Times in its report said Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Flickr and other social media companies “gain access to the treasury of data when people agree to the terms and conditions of downloading an app.”
The story said YouTube’s app can remotely operate smartphone cameras to take photographs or videos without the user’s knowledge. Google in a statement said the wholly owned unit does not collect text messages, but can access calling information “among other things.”