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Yesterday, Facebook admitted that it allowed Huawei, a Chinese telecom giant company with alleged ties to the countrys government, to have special access to data about the social sites users, an arrangement that could stoke fears that consumers personal information is at risk. The relationship between Facebook and Huawei was one of the special agreements brokered between the social giant and device makers over the past decade that sought to make it easier for Facebook users to access site services on a wide array of technologies.
It does not appear that Facebook data was stored on Huawei servers, only directly on devices, Facebook said. A spokesman for Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In Facebooks eyes, the partnerships were only an extension of services it already offered. In a blog post Monday, company executives said the arrangements were necessary in the early days of the mobile ecosystem, when not every smartphone company offered an app store. Facebook also stressed that many of the 60 device makers ” which it did not name in full, didnt store the data on their own servers. To privacy experts, however, Facebooks behind-the-scenes arrangements are problematic if they happened without users full knowledge or consent.
Facebooks partnerships with device makers could ultimately spell more trouble for the tech giant at the Federal Trade Commission, which is already investigating the company for a series of privacy mishaps. Because Facebook has misled consumers on its data-use policies in the past ” and previously been punished by the FTC ” the company could face sky-high fines if the agency finds it has erred again. A spokesman for the FTC has declined to indicate if it is investigating Facebooks arrangements with device makers.
