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Facebook AKA “Hydra” Thread


Hugo Stiglitz

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lol at this shit show. On appearance Zuckerberg is going to get drilled hard core and everyone will comment on his uncomfortable behavior. “He’s fucked!!!” Nope! The reality is that Zuckerberg is going to absolutely own those codgers...it just won’t look that way.

DOG-AND-PONY-SHOW

I’ll be surprised if Zuckerberg attempts to be the least bit forthright with the stooges running these hearings.


I think the only thing I got wrong was the “it just won’t look that way” bit. Zuckerberg did in fact own the fuck out of that entire hearing and it was pretty obvious from start to finish. His attys put in a team MVP performance in prepping this guy.

Just a masterful job of having those old fuckers leave the hearing with a whole lot of nothing.



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Cambridge Analytica probably deserves its own thread, but CA worked hand in glove w FB during the 2016 Trump campaign:

Re CA, this, after just a couple weeks at the helm, if that:

Quote

JUST IN: Alexander Tayler has stepped down as acting CEO of Cambridge Analytica - company

Shit's goin down

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38 minutes ago, triplehorn said:

Cambridge Analytica probably deserves its own thread, but CA worked hand in glove w FB during the 2016 Trump campaign:

Re CA, this, after just a couple weeks at the helm, if that:

Shit's goin down

Cambridge Analytica is just a front operation for SCL group. There are several of them. According to Wylie, no one that worked for CA was paid by checks from CA.  They all got paid from SCL, including Michael Flynn.

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Cambridge Analytica probably deserves its own thread, but CA worked hand in glove w FB during the 2016 Trump campaign:
Re CA, this, after just a couple weeks at the helm, if that:
JUST IN: Alexander Tayler has stepped down as acting CEO of Cambridge Analytica - company
Shit's goin down


Or it’s just a sacrificial lamb.
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25 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Cambridge Analytica is just a front operation for SCL group. There are several of them. According to Wylie, no one that worked for CA was paid by checks from CA.  They all got paid from SCL, including Michael Flynn.

Perhaps it was a reporting oversight, but correct.  I view them as the same (CA as front operation), but SCL is the mother ship that Nix initially had to abandon, and now Tayler.  CA has the more direct link to several notable Americans, SCL to notable pro-Putin Ukrainian oligarch Dimitri Firtash.

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As much as I hate Zuckerberg, the idiocy of our elected officials (both sides equally) has also been on display in these hearings.  

I think the big social media platforms are just licking their chops and hoping for more regulation from these nimrods.  FB wants greater barriers to entry for their business and these idiots are probably going to give them exactly what they want.

 

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20 minutes ago, Amobie said:

I think the big social media platforms are just licking their chops and hoping for more regulation from these nimrods. 

They are.  They stand to benefit the most from regulations. 

Just don't go anywhere near anti-trust regulations. 

 

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  • 1 month later...

Carole Cadwalladr with another good expose on Facebook. They must really hate her. 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/24/mark-zuckerberg-set-up-fraudulent-scheme-weaponise-data-facebook-court-case-alleges?CMP=share_btn_tw

 

Zuckerberg set up fraudulent scheme to 'weaponise' data, court case alleges

Facebook CEO exploited ability to access data from any user’s friend network, US case claims

Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison

 

Mark Zuckerberg faces allegations that he developed a “malicious and fraudulent scheme” to exploit vast amounts of private data to earn Facebook billions and force rivals out of business.

A company suing Facebook in a California court claims the social network’s chief executive “weaponised” the ability to access data from any user’s network of friends – the feature at the heart of the Cambridge Analyticascandal.

A legal motion filed last week in the superior court of San Mateo draws upon extensive confidential emails and messages between Facebook senior executives including Mark Zuckerberg. He is named individually in the case and, it is claimed, had personal oversight of the scheme.

Facebook rejects all claims, and has made a motion to have the case dismissed using a free speech defence. 

...

Sandy Parakilas, a former Facebook employee turned whistleblower who has testified to the UK parliament about its business practices, said the allegations were a “bombshell”. He claimed to MPs Facebook’s senior executives were aware of abuses of friends’ data back in 2011-12 and he was warned not to look into the issue.

“They felt that it was better not to know. I found that utterly horrifying,” he said. “If true, these allegations show a huge betrayal of users, partners and regulators. They would also show Facebook using its monopoly power to kill competition and putting profits over protecting its users.”

 

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https://postcourier.com.pg/shutting-facebook-png-reality/

Papapua New Guinea getting rid of FB for a month, government may come up with own social network.  This will end well. 

Quote

FACEBOOK users in the country can expect a month’s shutdown access to the site in PNG in order for the Communications and Information Technology Department to carry out research and analysis of its use.

Communications Minister Sam Basil said that the shutdown would enable the department and National Research Institute to conduct further research on how the social network was being used by users.

“The time will allow information to be collected to identify users that hide behind fake accounts, users that upload pornographic images, users that post false and misleading information on Facebook to be filtered and removed.

“This will allow genuine people with real identities to use the social network responsibly,” Mr Basil said.

The Minister said that the department could better analyse the positive impact it would have on the population during the month-long shutdown and weigh the impact of progress without or with its use.

Mr Basil said that his Ministry was trying to enforce the Cyber Crime Act which was legislated in 2016.

“The Act has already been passed, so what I’m trying to do is to ensure the law is enforced accordingly where perpetrators can be identified and charged accordingly. We cannot allow the abuse of Facebook to continue in the country.

“I will now work closely with the Police for them to be properly trained and informed to fully enforce the Cyber Crime Act.”

Mr Basil said the positives of the social network were there for the people to embrace.

“We can also look at the possibility of creating a new social network site for PNG citizens to use with genuine profiles as well.

“If there need be then we can gather our local applications developers to create a site that is more conducive for Papua New Guineans to communicate within the country and abroad as well,” he said.

Mr Basil said that a time had not been set as yet to implement the options but he would advise depending on assessment of the usage of the site over time.

 

 

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I suspect we will start seeing more countries ban social media as a means to "protect" their citizens. I also think the Papa New Guinea Facebook alternative will look like a 1990s Geocities website.

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55 minutes ago, F250 said:

I suspect we will start seeing more countries ban social media as a means to "protect" their citizens. I also think the Papa New Guinea Facebook alternative will look like a 1990s Geocities website.

I would have chosen "1990s BBS", but close enough.

I think we will see a lot more countries (and many Muslim countries already have some serious restrictions in place).  Russia, China, etc. all try to ban various services as it is.  It drives governments crazy, the thought that citizens can be talking about the government and potentially even conspiring against the government.

And they will use the same reasons - porn and spam.

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https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/facebook-device-partners-users-friends-data.html

 

As Facebook sought to become the world’s dominant social media service, it struck agreements allowing phone and other device makers access to vast amounts of its users’ personal information.

Facebook has reached data-sharing partnerships with at least 60 device makers — including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung — over the last decade, starting before Facebook apps were widely available on smartphones, company officials said. The deals allowed Facebook to expand its reach and let device makers offer customers popular features of the social network, such as messaging, “like” buttons and address books.

But the partnerships, whose scope has not previously been reported, raise concerns about the company’s privacy protections and compliance with a 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission. Facebook allowed the device companies access to the data of users’ friends without their explicit consent, even after declaring that it would no longer share such information with outsiders. Some device makers could retrieve personal information even from users’ friends who believed they had barred any sharing, The New York Times found.

Most of the partnerships remain in effect, though Facebook began winding them down in April. The company came under intensifying scrutiny by lawmakers and regulators after news reports in March that a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, misused the private information of tens of millions of Facebook users.

In the furor that followed, Facebook’s leaders said that the kind of access exploited by Cambridge in 2014 was cut off by the next year, when Facebook prohibited developers from collecting information from users’ friends. But the company officials did not disclose that Facebook had exempted the makers of cellphones, tablets and other hardware from such restrictions.

“You might think that Facebook or the device manufacturer is trustworthy,” said Serge Egelman, a privacy researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies the security of mobile apps. “But the problem is that as more and more data is collected on the device — and if it can be accessed by apps on the device — it creates serious privacy and security risks.”

In interviews, Facebook officials defended the data sharing as consistent with its privacy policies, the F.T.C. agreement and pledges to users. They said its partnerships were governed by contracts that strictly limited use of the data, including any stored on partners’ servers. The officials added that they knew of no cases where the information had been misused.

The company views its device partners as extensions of Facebook, serving its more than two billion users, the officials said.

“These partnerships work very differently from the way in which app developers use our platform,” said Ime Archibong, a Facebook vice president. Unlike developers that provide games and services to Facebook users, the device partners can use Facebook data only to provide versions of “the Facebook experience,” the officials said.

Some device partners can retrieve Facebook users’ relationship status, religion, political leaning and upcoming events, among other data. Tests by The Times showed that the partners requested and received data in the same way other third parties did.

Facebook’s view that the device makers are not outsiders lets the partners go even further, The Times found: They can obtain data about a user’s Facebook friends, even those who have denied Facebook permission to share information with any third parties.

In interviews, several former Facebook software engineers and security experts said they were surprised at the ability to override sharing restrictions.

“It’s like having door locks installed, only to find out that the locksmith also gave keys to all of his friends so they can come in and rifle through your stuff without having to ask you for permission,” said Ashkan Soltani, a research and privacy consultant who formerly served as the F.T.C.’s chief technologist.

Details of Facebook’s partnerships have emerged amid a reckoning in Silicon Valley over the volume of personal information collected on the internet and monetized by the tech industry. The pervasive collection of data, while largely unregulated in the United States, has come under growing criticism from elected officials at home and overseas and provoked concern among consumers about how freely their information is shared.

In a tense appearance before Congress in March, Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, emphasized what he said was a company priority for Facebook users.“Every piece of content that you share on Facebook you own,” he testified. ”You have complete control over who sees it and how you share it.”

But the device partnerships provoked discussion even within Facebook as early as 2012, according to Sandy Parakilas, who at the time led third-party advertising and privacy compliance for Facebook’s platform.

“This was flagged internally as a privacy issue,” said Mr. Parakilas, who left Facebook that year and has recently emerged as a harsh critic of the company. “It is shocking that this practice may still continue six years later, and it appears to contradict Facebook’s testimony to Congress that all friend permissions were disabled.”

The partnerships were briefly mentioned in documents submitted to German lawmakers investigating the social media giant’s privacy practices and released by Facebook in mid-May. But Facebook provided the lawmakers with the name of only one partner — BlackBerry, maker of the once-ubiquitous mobile device — and little information about how the agreements worked.

The submission followed testimony by Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president for global public policy, during a closed-door German parliamentary hearing in April. Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker, one of the lawmakers who questioned Mr. Kaplan, said in an interview that she believed the data partnerships disclosed by Facebook violated users’ privacy rights.

“What we have been trying to determine is whether Facebook has knowingly handed over user data elsewhere without explicit consent,” Ms. Winkelmeier-Becker said. “I would never have imagined that this might even be happening secretly via deals with device makers. BlackBerry users seem to have been turned into data dealers, unknowingly and unwillingly.”

In interviews with The Times, Facebook identified other partners: Apple and Samsung, the world’s two biggest smartphone makers, and Amazon, which sells tablets.

An Apple spokesman said the company relied on private access to Facebook data for features that enabled users to post photos to the social network without opening the Facebook app, among other things. Apple said its phones no longer had such access to Facebook as of last September.

Samsung declined to respond to questions about whether it had any data-sharing partnerships with Facebook. Amazon also declined to respond to questions.

Usher Lieberman, a BlackBerry spokesman, said in a statement that the company used Facebook data only to give its own customers access to their Facebook networks and messages. Mr. Lieberman said that the company “did not collect or mine the Facebook data of our customers,” adding that “BlackBerry has always been in the business of protecting, not monetizing, customer data.”

Microsoft entered a partnership with Facebook in 2008 that allowed Microsoft-powered devices to do things like add contacts and friends and receive notifications, according to a spokesman. He added that the data was stored locally on the phone and was not synced to Microsoft’s servers.

Facebook acknowledged that some partners did store users’ data — including friends’ data — on their own servers. A Facebook official said that regardless of where the data was kept, it was governed by strict agreements between the companies.

“I am dumbfounded by the attitude that anybody in Facebook’s corporate office would think allowing third parties access to data would be a good idea,” said Henning Schulzrinne, a computer science professor at Columbia University who specializes in network security and mobile systems.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed how loosely Facebook had policed the bustling ecosystem of developers building apps on its platform. They ranged from well-known players like Zynga, the maker of the FarmVille game, to smaller ones, like a Cambridge contractor who used a quiz taken by about 300,000 Facebook users to gain access to the profiles of as many as 87 million of their friends.

Those developers relied on Facebook’s public data channels, known as application programming interfaces, or APIs. But starting in 2007, the company also established private data channels for device manufacturers.

At the time, mobile phones were less powerful, and relatively few of them could run stand-alone Facebook apps like those now common on smartphones. The company continued to build new private APIs for device makers through 2014, spreading user data through tens of millions of mobile devices, game consoles, televisions and other systems outside Facebook’s direct control.

Facebook began moving to wind down the partnerships in April, after assessing its privacy and data practices in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Mr. Archibong said the company had concluded that the partnerships were no longer needed to serve Facebook users. About 22 of them have been shut down.

The broad access Facebook provided to device makers raises questions about its compliance with a 2011 consent decree with the F.T.C.

The decree barred Facebook from overriding users’ privacy settings without first getting explicit consent. That agreement stemmed from an investigation that found Facebook had allowed app developers and other third parties to collect personal details about users’ friends, even when those friends had asked that their information remain private.

After the Cambridge Analytica revelations, the F.T.C. began an investigation into whether Facebook’s continued sharing of data after 2011 violated the decree, potentially exposing the company to fines.

Facebook officials said the private data channels did not violate the decree because the company viewed its hardware partners as “service providers,” akin to a cloud computing service paid to store Facebook data or a company contracted to process credit card transactions. According to the consent decree, Facebook does not need to seek additional permission to share friend data with service providers.

“These contracts and partnerships are entirely consistent with Facebook’s F.T.C. consent decree,” Mr. Archibong, the Facebook official, said.

But Jessica Rich, a former F.T.C. official who helped lead the commission’s earlier Facebook investigation, disagreed with that assessment.

“Under Facebook’s interpretation, the exception swallows the rule,” said Ms. Rich, now with the Consumers Union. “They could argue that any sharing of data with third parties is part of the Facebook experience. And this is not at all how the public interpreted their 2014 announcement that they would limit third-party app access to friend data.”

To test one partner’s access to Facebook’s private data channels, The Times used a reporter’s Facebook account — with about 550 friends — and a 2013 BlackBerry device, monitoring what data the device requested and received. (More recent BlackBerry devices, which run Google’s Android operating system, do not use the same private channels, BlackBerry officials said.)

Immediately after the reporter connected the device to his Facebook account, it requested some of his profile data, including user ID, name, picture, “about” information, location, email and cellphone number. The device then retrieved the reporter’s private messages and the responses to them, along with the name and user ID of each person with whom he was communicating.

The data flowed to a BlackBerry app known as the Hub, which was designed to let BlackBerry users view all of their messages and social media accounts in one place.

The Hub also requested — and received — data that Facebook’s policy appears to prohibit. Since 2015, Facebook has said that apps can request only the names of friends using the same app. But the BlackBerry app had access to all of the reporter’s Facebook friends and, for most of them, returned information such as user ID, birthday, work and education history and whether they were currently online.

The BlackBerry device was also able to retrieve identifying information for nearly 295,000 Facebook users. Most of them were second-degree Facebook friends of the reporter, or friends of friends.

In all, Facebook empowers BlackBerry devices to access more than 50 types of information about users and their friends, The Times found.

 

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A Democratic congressman hammered Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, following a report that the company is sharing large amounts of its users’ data with other companies. 

“Sure looks like Zuckerberg lied to Congress about whether users have ‘complete control’ over who sees our data on Facebook," Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) tweeted on Sunday.

“This needs to be investigated and the people responsible need to be held accountable,” the top Democrat on the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee continued. 

 

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/390530-dem-lawmaker-says-facebook-may-have-lied-about-data

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1 minute ago, PittsburghTiger said:

A Democratic congressman hammered Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, following a report that the company is sharing large amounts of its users’ data with other companies. 

Sure looks like Zuckerberg lied to Congress about whether users have ‘complete control’ over who sees our data on Facebook," Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) tweeted on Sunday.

“This needs to be investigated and the people responsible need to be held accountable,” the top Democrat on the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee continued. 

 

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/390530-dem-lawmaker-says-facebook-may-have-lied-about-data

Narrator: He did.

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I doubt it. Dem Congressfolks and their close relatives have a lot of money invested in Facebook too.

Facebook will open up the checkbooks to both sides in the next election and this problem with go away for them. 

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11 minutes ago, Pods said:

I doubt it. Dem Congressfolks and their close relatives have a lot of money invested in Facebook too.

Facebook will open up the checkbooks to both sides in the next election and this problem with go away for them. 

Oh Facebook will survive. Probably with Sandberg at the helm. 

But Zuckerberg is a prime target for those wanting revenge. 

Edited by atomheartbevo
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1 minute ago, atomheartbevo said:

Oh Facebook will survive. Probably with Sandberg at the helm. 

But Zuckerberg is a prime target for those wanting revenge. 

Zuckerberg should absolutely step down as CEO but I know he won’t and it’s not going to cost him anything.

Rinse and repeat after the next egregious Facebook scandal. 

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Facebook shared access to user data with at least four Chinese electronics companies, including one, telecommunications firm Huawei, which has been labeled a national security threat by U.S. intelligence officials, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

The social media company had data-sharing partnerships with Huawei, Lenovo, Oppo and TCL that date back to at least 2010, according to the report.

The agreements gave the companies private access to certain user data. 

Facebook said the partnerships with the companies are still in effect but that it would end the Huawei agreement by the end of the week, according to the Times. 

Deals with manufacturers such as Amazon, Apple, BlackBerry and Samsung were also disclosed to the Times in a separate report on Sunday. 

These deals allowed Facebook to get an early foothold in the mobile market as far back as 2007, when Facebook apps were not commonplace on mobile devices. 

The deals let device makers have Facebook features, such as address books, "like" buttons and status updates, the Times reported. 

Any data shared with Huawei stayed on users' phones and didn't go to the company's servers, Facebook officials told the Times.

Nonetheless, U.S. lawmakers have advised for years that American carriers avoid buying Huawei gear.

"Facebook along with many other US tech companies have worked with [Huawei] and other Chinese manufacturers to integrate their services onto these phones," Francisco Varela, a Facebook vice president, said in a statement to The Hill. "Facebook's integrations with Huawei, Lenovo, OPPO and TCL were controlled from the get go - and we approved the Facebook experiences these companies built."

"Given the interest from Congress, we wanted to make clear that all the information from these integrations with Huawei was stored on the device, not on Huawei's servers," he added. 

Huawei was able to carry out their international expansion thanks to billions of dollars in lines of credit from Chinese government-owned banks.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has gone after Huawei and its rival, ZTE, by banning U.S. suppliers from selling to the companies. 

 

 

That’s marvelous 

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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5 hours ago, PittsburghTiger said:

I reckon we may see Zuckerberg, and his booster seat, in front of Congress again.

I’ve said for a while Americans should just go ahead assume the Chinese and Russian governments already have all their personal Facebook data.

Facebook gets closer and closer to this reality with every new disclosure.

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By David Shepardson and David Ingram

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc faced criticism on Wednesday from Republican and Democratic U.S. lawmakers who demanded that the social media company be more forthcoming about data it has shared with four Chinese firms.

The bipartisan criticism reflected rising frustration in Congress about how Facebook protects the privacy of the more than 2 billion people who use its services worldwide.

The leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee accused Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg of failing to disclose the company's agreements with the Chinese firms when he appeared before them in April and testified about Facebook's sharing of users' personal information with third parties.

"Clearly, the company's partnerships with Chinese technology companies and others should have been disclosed before Congress and the American people," the panel's Republican chairman, Greg Walden, and top Democrat Frank Pallone said in a statement.

"We strongly encourage full transparency from Facebook and the entire tech community," they wrote.

Facebook responded that Zuckerberg spent more than 10 hours responding to lawmakers' questions.

"The arrangements in question had been highly visible for years - with many manufacturers advertising these features. But with fewer and fewer people relying on them, we proactively announced this spring we'd begin winding them down," the company said in a statement.

Facebook has said that the contracts with smartphone maker Huawei Technologies Co Ltd [HWT.UL] and other Chinese firms were standard industry practice and necessary to ensure that people who bought electronic devices had ready access to Facebook services.

Facebook said it had control over the data sharing all along and that other tech firms struck similar arrangements with U.S. and Chinese companies in the early days of smartphones.

Facebook shares closed down nearly 1 percent in New York.

On Tuesday, Facebook said Huawei, computer maker Lenovo Group and smartphone makers OPPO and TCL Corp were among about 60 companies worldwide that received access to some user data after they signed contracts to re-create Facebook-like experiences for their users.

Huawei, the world's third-largest smartphone maker, has come under scrutiny from U.S. intelligence agencies that have said that Chinese telecommunications companies provide an opportunity for foreign espionage and threaten critical U.S. infrastructure, something the Chinese have denied.

Huawei said in a statement, "Like all leading smartphone providers, Huawei worked with Facebook to make Facebook's service more convenient for users. Huawei has never collected or stored any Facebook user data."

Francisco Varela, Facebook's vice president of mobile partnerships, said on Tuesday the user data in question was stored on people's devices, not on Huawei's company servers.

Senator Ed Markey, a Democrat, wrote on Twitter, "Mark Zuckerberg needs to return to Congress and testify why @facebook shared Americans' private information with questionable Chinese companies."

Republican Senator Marco Rubio asked on Twitter, "why didn't @facebook just reveal this data sharing deal with #Huawei months ago? And don't compare this to deals with other telecomms. S.Korea govt doesnt control or use @Samsung the way China controls & uses Huawei."

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman had no comment.

Lawmakers expressed concern after The New York Times reported that the data of users' friends could have been accessed without their explicit consent. Facebook denied that, and said the data access was to allow its users to access account features on mobile devices.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which reached a settlement with Facebook in 2011 over its information-sharing practices, declined comment.

In a separate letter on Tuesday, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee pressed Facebook for more information, while the Senate Intelligence Committee's top Democrat urged Facebook to release further details. Facebook said it would address the commerce panel's questions.

Congressional aides have said Facebook has not answered hundreds of questions from lawmakers after Zuckerberg's April testimony before two committees. Several aides said lawmakers were waiting for Facebook's answers before deciding on whether to hold additional hearings.

Facebook has said that other companies that have used its data sharing include Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc, HTC Corp, Microsoft Corp and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

Several countries are scrutinizing Facebook after it failed to protect the data of some 87 million users that was shared with now-defunct political data firm Cambridge Analytica.


 

(Reporting by David Shepardson and David Ingram; Additional reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Will Dunham and Leslie Adler)

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By 
Deepa Seetharaman and 
 
Kirsten Grind
Updated June 8, 2018 7:28 p.m. ET
 

Facebook Inc. FB 0.49% struck customized data-sharing deals that gave select companies special access to user records well after the point in 2015 that the social network has said it walled off that information, according to court documents, company officials and people familiar with the matter.

Some of those and other agreements, collectively known internally as “whitelists,” also allowed certain companies to access additional information about a user’s Facebook friends, the people familiar with the matter said. That included information like phone numbers and a metric called “friend link” that measured the degree of closeness between users and others in their network, the people said.

The whitelist deals were struck with companies including Royal Bank of Canada and Nissan Motor Co. , who advertised on Facebook or were valuable for other reasons, according to some of the people familiar with the matter. They show that Facebook gave special data access to a broader universe of companies than was previously disclosed. They also raise further questions about who has access to the data of billions of Facebook users and why they had access, at a time when Congress is demanding the company be held accountable for the flow of that data.

Many of these customized deals were separate from Facebook’s data-sharing partnerships with at least 60 device makers, which it disclosed this week. Several lawmakers and regulators have said those device-maker arrangements merit further investigation.

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-gave-some-companies-access-to-additional-data-about-users-friends-1528490406

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