Further to this article and “Tap, tap, tapping us all up — mobile apps invade privacy” (News, last week), Facebook has asked us to point out that while users do provide permission for accessing data from SMS (short-message service) messages when they sign its terms and conditions, the function is not used by Facebook and it has no plans to do so. If that position were to change, users would be informed.
Companies are using smartphone apps to extract vast quantities of private information about users’ lives, in some cases reading their text messages and intercepting calls.
Among those that admitted reading text messages this weekend was the internet giant Facebook, which said it was accessing the information as part of a trial to launch its own messaging service.
Source: Internet (Robin Henry and Cal Flyn, The Times)
