Facebook logged SMS texts and phone calls without explicitly notifying users | Technology | The Guardian

Facebook logged SMS texts and phone calls without explicitly notifying users | Technology | The Guardian Facebook logged SMS texts and phone calls without explicitly notifying users Users complain of phone and text data collected by the company despite never having agreed to practice Alex Hern and agencies @alexhern Thu 29 Mar 2018 15.36 BST Last modified on Thu 29 Mar 2018 22.00 BST View more sharing options Shares 321 facebook Facebook issued a ‘Fact Check’, in which the company repeatedly noted ‘people have to expressly agree to use this feature’ and ‘uploading this information has always been opt-in only’. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA Facebook began logging the text messages and phone calls of its users before it explicitly notified them of its practice, contradicting the company’s earlier claims that “uploading this information has always been opt-in only”. In at least one previous version of the Messenger app, Facebook only told users that the setting would enable them to “send and receive SMS in Messenger”, and presented the option to users without an obvious way to opt out: the prompt offered a big blue button reading “OK”, and a much smaller grey link to “settings”. Nowhere in the opt-in dialogue was it made clear that text histories would be uploaded to Facebook’s servers and stored indefinitely.