Facebook Spying, Reading SMS Messages on Your Phone?

Facebook spy app? The company denies the spy allegations made by Sunday Times (London) that Facebook reads text messages of phone owners who useFacebook app.

The Sunday Times article claimed that Facebook had admitted to reading text messages as part of a trial for a future messaging service. The Sunday Times pointed to other companies involved in the same practice (spying on text messages) such as Yahoo, Flickr, and Badoo. The article further notes that some applications can intercept phone calls, remotely access a smartphone’s camera, track location, log calls, and copy or import contact list data.

In a statement issued to The Verge, Facebook said the Sunday Times article is misleading. Here’s what the Facebook spokesperson relayed to the Verge:

The Sunday Times has done some creative conspiracy theorizing but the suggestion that we’re secretly reading people’s texts is ridiculous. Instead, the permission is clearly disclosed on the app page in the Android marketplace and is in anticipation of new features that enable users to integrate Facebook features with their texts. However, other than some very limited testing, we haven’t launched anything so we’re not using the permission. If we do, it will be obvious to users what’s happening. We’ll keep you posted on our progress.

Facebook also issued a similar statement to zdnet, reiterating that there is no reading of user text messages. But at the same time, the leading social networking site acknowledged that the Facebook app permissions in the Android Market does require read and write capabilities for SMS.

Technically, the application can integrate with the SMS system of the user’s smartphone, but Facebook strongly emphasized that it is for testing purposes only.

In other words, Facebook is saying that their Android app has the capability to read and write text messages on smartphones and that by downloading the app, the user in fact gives permission to do that. Facebook said however, that it is not using these capabilities yet. If Facebook ultimately launches any feature that makes use of these permissions, we will ensure that this is accompanied by appropriate guidance/educational materials, the company said as much to PCWorld.

The Facebook app permissions page on Android market indeed clearly states that the phone application has access to the user’s messages. If one bothers to read the full permissions page of the Facebook app, the user is in fact allowing Facebook to do a lot more than that. The permissions gives Facebook the liberty to do the following:

• Act as an account authenticator via the Account Manager including creating accounts and getting and setting their passwords
• Manage the account list, that includes performing operations like adding, removing accounts, and deleting their password
• Access fine location sources like the GPS on the device where available (commonly known as location tracking)
• Write,edit, receive, process, or read SMS or MMS messages stored on your device or SIM card
• Allow full internet access and create network sockets
• Read or modify all of the contact (address) data stored on your device
• Access phone features of your device including determining the phone number and serial number of your phone, whether a call is active, and the phone number of the people you are calling
• Write, modify or delete USB storage or SD card contents
• Modify sync settings
• Prevent the smartphone from sleeping

So there, it seems users are virtually giving away control of their smartphone when they download the Facebook app. But Facebook said that various communication apps in the market also use these permissions.

What apps can access on your phone

• Flickr
  
  1. Location data
  2. Text messages
  3. Contact book
  4. Who you are calling
  5. Camera
• Flixster
  
  1. Location data
  2. Online account IDs
  3. Who you are calling
• YouTube
  
  1. Online account IDs
  2. Who you are calling
  3. Camera
• Foursquare
  
  1. Location data
  2. Online account IDs
  3. Who you are calling
• TweetDeck
  
  1. Location data
  2. Online account IDs
  3. Who you are calling
• Netflix
  
  1. Internet, browsing history
• Facebook
  
  1. Location data
  2. Text messages
  3. Contact book
  4. Online account IDs
  5. Who you are calling
• Ancestry.co.uk
  
  1. Location data
  2. Camera
• Badoo
  
  1. Location data
  2. Text messages
  3. Contact book
  4. Who you are calling
  5. Camera
• Angry Birds
  
  1. Location data
  2. Who you are calling
• Yahoo Messenger
  
  1. Text messages
  2. Contact book
  3. Online account IDs
  4. Who you are calling
• Shazam
  
  1. Location data
  2. Who you are calling
• My Fitness Pal
  
  1. Contact book
  2. Who you are calling
  3. Camera
• My Remote Lock
  
  1. Contact book
  2. Who you are calling
  3. May intercept phone calls

YouTube, which the Times article said can remotely control a smartphone’s camera, does not collect text message data (as indicated on the list above), according to a Google spokesperson who responded to zdnet. But YouTube is capable of collecting calling information among other things.

Yahoo, Flickr, and Badoo have not given comments on the Sunday Times article as of this writing.

According to a YouGov poll cited by the Sunday Times, 7 out of 10 smartphone owners never or rarely read the terms and conditions of apps they download.

Facebook app for Android: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.facebook.katana&feature=top-free