Facebook: Do not release your new app feature that listens to users’ conversations.
Facebook just announced a new feature to its app, which will let it listen to our conversations through our own phones’ microphone. Talk about a Big Brother move.
Facebook says the feature will be used for harmless things, like identifying the song or TV show playing in the background, but it actually has the ability to listen to everything -- including your private conservations -- and store it indefinitely.
Not only is this move just downright creepy, it’s also a massive threat to our privacy. This isn’t the first time Facebook has been criticized for breaching our right to privacy, and it’s hoping this feature will fly under the radar. No such luck for Facebook. If we act now, we can stop Facebook in its tracks before it has a chance to release the feature.
Tell Facebook not to release its creepy and dangerous new app feature that listens to users’ conversations.
Facebook says it'll be responsible with this feature, but we know we can't trust it. After all, just a few months ago Facebook came under fire for receiving millions of dollars for working with the National Security Agency’s PRISM, a wide-scale and highly controversial public electronic data surveillance program -- something its CEO Mark Zuckerberg initially denied. This is also the company that lied about its now-scuttered Beacon program -- an advertisement system that sent our “private” data from external websites to Facebook.
It seems like every few months, there's another big Facebook privacy scandal, and yet the social media giant is pushing this new app anyway. Why? The information it gathers by listening to its 1.2 billion users worldwide can be sold for huge profits to advertisers and corporations looking for better information on consumer tastes and preferences.
Facebook is acting in the best interests of its bank account, not its users. This has gone too far - we have to stop it now.
Facebook: This is an extreme invasion of your users’ privacy. Do not release this new feature, and do not listen to us through our phones’ microphones.
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More information:
Facebook Microphone Update To Store Data: Social Media Giant Confirms New Feature Will Aggregate Information International Business Times, May 22, 2014.
Facebook Wants To Listen In On What You're Doing Forbes, May 22, 2014.
http://action.sumofus.org/a/Facebook-app-taps-phones/?sub=fb
Replies
....correct me if I am wrong but isnt it for high~tech cell phone gadgets that phone user zombies spend every awake moment, let it be on the train, walking, sexing, driving, working. Yes, such sheep is controled...................stop using cell phones and facebook will have no power over your calls..........oohh, by the way, dont give them your #
LOL, easy peazy....Nuff said. I am only on Facebook for one reason, to talk to my grown kids. They are on facebook and we chat all the time. I just got Skype so now I can skip facebook. I was only there to play Farmville but soon got tired of that. Then my sons joined facebook for the chat feature, so I stayed. I am hard of hearing and don't have a phone that does chat and can't hear on a phone, but with earphones I can hear on Skype so will probably leave facebook. If facebook spies on me then they must be very bored, lol, but will be leaving them soon.
Facebook makes their money on advertising. To expect them to respect privacy and integrity while also using their apps, would be displaying monkey-like intelligence. ;)
I can't even play Farmville since I can't allow it to see my contact list nor post on my wall. In fact, I can't use ANY of the features facebook offers due to this little problem. I don't see how anyone else could either. :)
I have never had a Facebook account and will never attempt to create one......It's a tool for corporations, NSA and "big brother USA," which I was informed of years before Snowden's revelations...
Very pleased that I remain anonomous.......The world is full of state snoopers and private cranks, who have no business to know anything that I deem as personal....
I would never complete internet banking, as again, it's not as secure as many are lead to believe and the criminals that might threaten your finances, may well be the banksters and corporations, themselves...not just some outside lone crank hacker, from some isolated backwater, or a team.....as the tabloids often use as an example.
For the state and other persons to know about my esoteric and political views, is acceptable...I hope they get the message...
For them to have some indication, as to my ground crew work, is acceptable, as long as GFL security is not compromised and generally, it isn't, as the online aspect is a mere tip of the iceberg...the rest is not penetrable, using electronic means...
If anyone has a Twitter account, ditch that too....It's all an exercise in data harvesting...YOUR PERSONAL DATA....
I use FB very little and do not trust them so would never get or use the APP.
Thanks for the info, Luke!