Facebook, which was first launched in 2004, reached the summit of one of the most used social websites all over the world, by 2018. It is an American social media and social networking company. The data sharing policy of facebook has become one of the most talkative global matters currently. The revelation of data sharing VIPS has made a revolutionary impact critically on the society socially, politically, technically and by other means.
Background Story
Time to time, matters regarding the data sharing policy of facebook came into discussion within the community. Privacy of user data is a legitimate fact concerned with a social website. Although Facebook was among successful and famous social websites, several issues came to the surface regarding the lack of privacy and inappropriate usage of user data.
It is said that originally Facebook has allowed third party apps to access a wide range of data about the users, friends of users who signed up with the apps. Facebook has revealed that 61 companies were given temporary access to user data. Further 52 were authorized to tap data to recreate experiences similar to Facebook. The social network had to go through a great criticism with the revelation that several Chinese companies including “Huawei” were also included in the latter list. But with the critical review given by the Irish data protection commissioner about the data sharing policy, it was announced that access would be blocked from the 30th of April 2015.
Furthermore, Mark Zuckerberg’s company was forced to be more transparent, as to avoid incidents such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where user data was obtained for improper means.
The current state of disclosure of people’s data
According to the latest disclosure done by the Facebook, extra eight months of access time was given to “Serotek”, a San Francisco based company specializing in software for visually impaired users. In addition, 60 other companies were given shorter extensions to the deadline and this includes;
- Nike shoe company
- Nissan motor company
- Russian internet company Mail.ru
- UPS courier company
- “Playtika”
And also Facebook has revealed that it has allowed several hardware and software companies to access user data in order to build their own versions of Facebook .
Though it was warned by the US watchdogs, with regards to the breach of privacy pledges that it has made to its members, through the latest revealings it has been identified that some conventional partnerships still continue with the following companies.
- Dell
- HTC
- Kodak
- LG
- Warner Bros
- Virgin Mobile
- Orange are some such companies.
Facebook has also revealed that it continued to provide access to its user data to 14 companies. Below are some of the companies which had not been disclosed earlier.
- Alibaba
- Nokia
- Yahoo
- Vodafone
- Zing Mobile
Why Facebook privacy is criticized to this level?
Revealings done by Facebook regarding its data sharing policy created chaos among communities. With the Cambridge Analytica scandal, data sharing habits of Facebook became a global concern. Facebook was even fined for the abuse of user data.
On the other hand, the Facebook rejects the claims regarding the breach of privacy pledges. They have also provided the latest update on its effort to identify scandals similar to the Cambridge Analytica. Facebook has revealed that it had suspended about 200 apps to date because of this issue. Some apps are still under considerable investigation.
All in all, it seems like Facebook is taking the data sharing matter seriously after the scandal. However, some companies are given special privileges to access user data under special data-sharing agreements with Facebook.
