In the time of Personal data leaks of user from Facebook, which have led to major drops for Facebook as a trustworthy social media platform. A new report from the London-based UK charity and watchdog group Privacy International (PI) has claimed that there are major Android apps that are still sending data directly to Facebook, even if the user is not logged in on Facebook or don’t even have a Facebook account.
Privacy International has found that Yelp, Duolingo, two Muslim prayer apps, a bible app and a much popular job search app called Indeed is delivering data to Facebook to help set up ads for the users when they browse the social media. The report doesn’t say what particular data is transferred but it claims that the data helps Facebook know the movement of user in its network of services.
PI did the similar investigation in December last year that revealed the names of the major apps that transfers data to Facebook without user’s approval, it claimed the data transfer goes through both iOS and Android apps even with Apple’s strict privacy rules.
On Android, Facebook has collected much more sensitive data of users such as such as contact logs, call history, SMS data, and real-time location data which helps Facebook targeting ads for users. PI’s December 2018 report found almost 70% of the 34 major apps including (Kayak and Spotify) that they tested is sending data directly to Facebook without user’s consent.
A WSJ report says that some of the apps stopped using the tools that PI found in the December 2018 report have stopped using these practice but Yelp and Duolingo and some other apps are still doing it, but the app makers said they will stop using it.
Apps uses Facebook SDK to integrate services like Facebook login and ad tracking tools to their apps.
