Facebook is admitting the truth of a report from the New York Times that exposed the social media giant for allowing several companies in depth access to users’ data.
The report alleged in particular that Spotify, Netflix and the Royal Bank of Canada could even “read, write and delete users’ private messages.”
Facebook’s Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, who works as director of developer platforms and programs, spoke on behalf of the company admitting that partners had access to messages.
“But people had to explicitly sign in to Facebook first to use a partner’s messaging feature. Take Spotify for example. After signing in to your Facebook account in Spotify’s desktop app, you could then send and receive messages without ever leaving the app. Our API provided partners with access to the person’s messages in order to power this type of feature,” Papamiltiadis clarified.
Facebook informed the Times that is found no evidence that partners had abused their access. Furthermore, spokespeople for Netflix and Spotify stated that the companies “were unaware of the broad powers Facebook had granted them.” While a spokesman fo the Royal Bank of Canada disputed that “the bank had any such access.”
