Facebook will take lesser call history and SMS data

Reacting to concerns that it has been getting call histories and more for years.
By Jason Stokes,
Continuing its efforts to avoid the misuse of data it gets from users, Facebook is going to delete all call logs it has, that are older than a year.

Continuing its efforts to avoid the misuse of data it gets from users, Facebook is going to delete all call logs it has, that are older than a year. “We’ve reviewed this feature to confirm that Facebook does not collect the content of messages - and will delete all logs older than one year,” Mike Schroepfer, chief technology officer at Facebook said. 

Schroepfer was talking about recent reports that Facebook has been collecting call records and SMS data from Android smartphones for years, without users’ permission. The company was apparently using an “opt-in feature” that helped it improve the algorithm which is used for recommending friends to you. The algorithm would request for access to the user’s SMS data, contacts and call history.

“In the future, the client will only upload to our servers the information needed to offer this feature,” Schroepfer said. As a result, other data like the time spent on calls, call histories and more will not be collected.

Finally, while trying to reassure the people "if their information may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica," Schroepfer noted, "Starting on Monday, April 9, we’ll show people a link at the top of their News Feed so they can see what apps they use — and the information they have shared with those apps. People will also be able to remove apps that they no longer want."

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