Leading social media company Facebook wants to read SMSs and other
confidential information of people on the Android mobile phone platform,
cyber security firm Kaspersky said today. "Over the last few days there has been a constant scrutiny over
Facebook having access to your SMS. Buried within the latest update for
Facebook's Android app is a feature that is causing growing concern
among some users," Kaspersky said in a statement today.No immediate comments were received from Facebook.Facebook is one of the companies that has been accused by US
Whistleblower Edward Snowden of sneaking in to private information to
help National Security Agency of US in spying at global level. The
social media firm has denied that allegation.The Facebook application at the time of installation on Android
mobile phones seeks certain permissions and the updated version now asks
users to allow it "Read your text messages (SMS or MMS)".The social media's logic behind seeking access to SMS is that "if
you add a phone number to your account, this allows us to confirm your
phone number automatically by finding the confirmation code that we send
via text message".The updated Facebook application now wants to "Read calendar
events plus confidential information" which it justifies as it is
required to allow "the app to show your calendar availability (based on
your phone s calendar) when you re viewing an event on Facebook".Facebook sends code via SMS that has to be entered when a user
registers with the social media website which in a way helps the company
verify the authenticity of users twice."Two-factor authentication provides an extra level of security,
so it's good to see Facebook providing this option ... As a final note,
we'd urge people to carefully check the permissions requested by any app
when you first install it," Kaspersky Lab's Principal Security
Researcher David Emm said.Kaspersky added the permissions also grants access to multimedia messages, for which reason is not explicitly given.It expressed apprehension on the word 'automatic' used in the permission sought by Facebook."...the key, it seems to lie in the word 'automatically'. Surely
the app doesn't need to do this automatically. Facebook could simply
prompt me to type in the code manually. Or, at the very least, provide
this option," Kaspersky said.It added that this may be an innocent feature "but in the light
of growing concerns about online privacy, such an option would help to
allay people's fears".Facebook is reported to have 93 million users in India out of
which 75 million access it from their mobile phone as of December 2013.The permissions sought by Facebook are apart from similar
permissions sought by Google's Android platform in the name of Facebook.The social media company on its website said: "Keep in mind that
Android controls the way the permissions are named, and the way they're
named doesn't necessarily reflect the way the Facebook app uses them. We
realise that some of these permissions sound scary, so we d like to
provide more info about how we use them."On the issue of permission sought by Android to access
information and edit feature in user's phone, Google has earlier said,
"Its an app which you (user) have choice of installing."Facebook - with more than 1.2 billion users worldwide - is
celebrating its 10th birthday amidst challenges of keeping its original
base of young users with new innovative social networks coming to the
fore.
The company was launched by Mark Zuckerberg on February 4, 2004, from Harvard University.
