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Facebook denies it let more than 150 companies misuse personal data

The New York Times reported Tuesday that Facebook for many years gave more than 150 companies extensive access to personal data including private messages and contact information for users' friends than was previously known and without users' explicit consent.

The Times said it based its reporting on more than 270 pages of internal Facebook documents and interviews with more than 50 former employees of Facebook and its so-called integration partners, as well as other former government officials and privacy advocates.

The statement didn't, however, address the crux of the Times article, which was that Facebook had made the data available without disclosing the breadth of information it provided and, in many cases, without users' knowledge or agreement.

According to The Times, Facebook allowed Microsoft's Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all of Facebook users' friends without consent, and it gave Netflix, Spotify and the Royal Bank of Canada access to read, write and delete users' private messages.

The Times said the Royal Bank of Canada disputed that it had access, while Spotify and Netflix told it that they were unaware that they even had such broad access.

According to the FTC, information that suddenly became public without consent included users' profile pictures, political views and lists of online friends.

In some cases, the revision publicly revived personal photos even after users had deleted them, according to the complaint.

Facebook's statement Tuesday night didn't explain why more than 150 companies would enter into such agreements if they weren't able to use the information they were provided for their own purposes.

Alex Johnson is a senior writer for NBC News covering general news, with an emphasis on explanatory journalism, data analysis, technology and religion.

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Author: Nbcnews

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