Facebook told Reuters Thursday: It will not use the user phone numbers provided to it for the two-factor authentication feature of (People You May Know), as part of a wide-ranging reform of its privacy practices.
Reports last year revealed that Facebook was using the personal data it obtained for two-factor authentication to serve ads, which angered privacy advocates, who described the practice as deceptive and said: It leads to a lack of confidence in an essential digital security tool.
The company - which has the largest social network in the world with over 2.48 billion monthly active users - said it had already stopped allowing these phone numbers to be used for advertising in June and has now begun expanding this chapter to include friends ’suggestions.
Facebook has started updates that are part of a $ 5 billion settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission, which asks it to step up safeguards against user data to resolve a government investigation into privacy practices.
And the US Federal Trade Commission - still pending approval in the court order - stated: Facebook failed to disclose that the phone numbers provided for two-factor authentication would also be used in advertisements, and specifically blocked this approach from security tools.
The change - which begins to apply this week in Ecuador, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Libya and Cambodia to be applied worldwide early next year - will prevent the use of any phone numbers provided to Facebook while subscribing to two-factor authentication to make friends ’suggestions.
Current users of the tool will not be affected by this decision, but they can unlink their two-factor authentication numbers from the Buddy Suggestion feature by deleting and adding them again. A spokeswoman for the company said: The separation between two-factor authentication and the announcement that started during the summer of 2019 applies to new and existing users.
0 Comments