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Thursday, December 20, 2018

Facebook Under Siege


Facebook granted major tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Netflix access to users' personal data in ways not previously disclosed, according to interviews and internal documents reported by The NYTimes.

According to The Hill, the news outlet cited interviews and hundreds of documents from the social media platform that showed the company allowed Microsoft's Bing search engine to view the names of Facebook users' friends without consent, allowed Netflix and Spotify to read users' private messages and allowed Amazon to obtain users' names and contact information through their friends.

The agreements with Facebook applied to more than 150 companies, most of which are technology and online retail sites, the Times reported.

Each of the deals was in effect as recently as 2017, and some were active this year, according to the Times.

Fast backlash: Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) on Tuesday cited the bombshell report in his call for a federal privacy law.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) also told reporters on Wednesday that one of Congress's priorities next year will be "how we treat people's behavior online."

"Is it your personal property that you have a right to control how it's used, or is it something you surrender every time you go online?" he said.

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