[1]Huge privacy breach as Facebook became social media leader.
There is a frightening reason why Facebook got to be the biggest communications medium in human history. Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Microsoft, Blackberry, and other major phone makers shared the personal data of users with the Social Network.
Up to 60 companies shared data about smartphone users with Facebook in secret partnerships, The New York Times revealed [2]. The partnerships lasted for over 10 years and only ended in April 2018.
The data shared might have included details of intimate relationships, religious beliefs, political beliefs, and data about events attended, The Times claimed. The users did not know that their data was being shared with Facebook.
Your Data is being shared with Facebook whether you want it or not
The Times found: “They can obtain data about a user’s Facebook friends, even those who have denied Facebook permission to share information with any third parties.”
Former Facebook engineers and security experts were shocked at the amount of data the company had access to. Many of Facebook’s most popular features were apparently based on the data.
Facebook used the data to make a version of its popular website for smartphones. The Times did not say whether Facebook used the data to design its other products like WhatsApp and Instagram.
The secret partnerships only came to light at a closed-door hearing of a German parliamentary committee in April, The Times revealed. At that meeting, Facebook’s vice president for global public policy, Joel Kaplan admitted the partnerships existed.
There is No Privacy on Facebook
Facebook’s mobile phone app will have 1.38 billion users worldwide by the end of 2018, Statista [3] estimated. Another Facebook product the social messaging solution WhatsApp had 1.7 billion users worldwide in December 2017.
That means Facebook might have as many 3.08 billion users worldwide making it the largest media in history. That means Mark Zuckerberg is the greatest media tycoon who ever lived. Facebook can now reach more people than the world’s TV networks or newspapers.
That is frightening because Zuckerberg is the man who once said, “privacy is no longer a social norm.” Zuckerberg is worth an estimated $78 billion. Facebook is extremely lucrative; the social network had $43.956 billion in the bank on March 31, 2018.
How to Guard and Protect your Privacy in the Age of Facebook
There are few things that you can do to preserve privacy in the age of Facebook. Some of them include:• Use a smartphone made by Motorola or LG, those companies are not on the list of companies that shared data with Facebook.
• Do not use Facebook on your phone because there is no way to know how Zuckerberg is tracking you through it.
• Do not use Facebook or its subsidiaries such as WhatsApp and Instagram.
• Use an encrypted social media such as Telegram which might be safer than Facebook. Telegram is so secure that governments in Russia and Iran tried to ban it. The governments wanted to ban Telegram because they were unable to read users’ messages.
• Only use Facebook for business purposes.
• Do not use Apple phones, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov alleged that Apple blocked updates designed to make the product more secure. Durov claimed Apple took that action at the behest of Russian censors.
Silicon Valley has no respect for your privacy or security. If you want privacy, you should consider unplugging from its products completely.