The Federal Trade Commission Monday confirmed it’s investigating Facebook in the wake of revelations that the company allowed the Trump-linked firm Cambridge Analytica to improperly obtain data on 50 million Facebook users. (Politico)
Facebook’s stock, which already took a big hit last week, plunged as a result. Tom Pahl, acting director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said the probe of Facebook’s privacy practices would include whether the company engaged in “unfair acts” that cause “substantial injury” to consumers. (THR / AP)
Facebook also confirmed it had been collecting and storing call logs and text message metadata for millions of Android users. Last week, one user who downloaded his data to learn what Facebook knew about him in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal found that the company had a record of the date, time, duration and recipient of calls he had made from the past few years. (Slate / Future Tense)
Facebook provided some clarification. The social network reinforced in a Newsroom post that the ability to import non-Facebook contacts into its Messenger application is strictly an opt-in choice for users, and that it can be turned off at any time via settings in Messenger and Facebook Lite. (Adweek)