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Facebook “partner” arrangements: Are they as bad as they look?

A report by The New York Times on Tuesday evening laid out a series of apparently scandalous revelations about how Facebook gave other technology companies access to users private information, including friends lists and private messages.

The report, however, may have exaggerated the scope of Facebook partners access to that data, which in many cases was limited to application integration.

In a statement issued Tuesday night, Facebook's director of developer platforms,Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, wrote of the integration features offered to Facebook partners:

First, people could access their Facebook accounts or specific Facebook features on devices and platforms built by other companies like Apple, Amazon, Blackberry and Yahoo. Second, people could have more social experienceslike seeing recommendations from their Facebook friendson other popular apps and websites, like Netflix, The New York Times, Pandora and Spotify.

Instant personalization sent profile data automatically to some websites , including the users name, friends list, and email address.

For example, The New York Times report called out an integration of Facebook Messenger with the Spotify music streaming service and other companies applications as a privacy threat.

Facebook executives themselves, however, decided that the free market of application integration with the Facebook platform was not necessarily a good thing. That happened in part because of applications that were causing privacy concerns, including one from Six4Three that scoured Facebook photos for images of women in bikinis.

Stamos noted that part of the problem with Facebooks response to the reportand the companys privacy posture in generalis that Facebook executives have failed to be transparent about what has and has not been shut down in Facebooks application interfaces.

Original article