Summary: Earlier this week, a New York Times report revealed that Facebook had entered into agreements with 60 device makers that allowed them to access large quantities user data. Now, the Times and the Washington Post have reported that four Chinese manufacturers, including Huawei, have been part of the program since 2010, raising security concerns among officials.
Facebook downplayed NYT's initial report, insisting that the offers were put in place to help device makers propose Facebook on their operating systems in a time before the applications and application stores.
News that Huawei, Lenovo, Oppo, and TCL were among the companies to have Facebook agreements that date back nearly a decade is likely to add to Facebook's problems. Huawei has been back in the limelight this year; Six US secret service chiefs warned Americans not to use company devices at the risk of seeing or stealing personal data, because of alleged links with the Chinese government.
"Facebook officials said that agreements with Chinese companies allowed them access similar to that offered to BlackBerry, which allowed them to retrieve detailed information about their users and friends." Writes the Times .
Facebook responded to the latest report by stating "as well as many other US technology companies have worked with them [Huawei] and other Chinese manufacturers to integrate their services on these phones."
Facebook officials added that the data shared with Huawei remained on the device, not on the company's servers. The agreement between the two companies is expected to end before the end of the week.
"All of Facebook's integrations with Huawei, Lenovo, Oppo and TCL have been controlled from the start - and Facebook has approved everything that has been built," said Francisco Varela, vice president of Facebook. "Given the interest of Congress, we wanted to clarify that all the information from these integrations with Huawei was stored on the device, not on Huawei's servers."
U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D - VA) asked for answers. "Concerns about Huawei are not new - they have been widely circulated since 2012, when the House Standing Committee on Intelligence issued a well-read report on the close relations between the Chinese Communist Party and the equipment manufacturers."
"The news that Facebook has provided privileged access to Facebook APIs to Chinese device makers like Huawei and TCL raise legitimate concerns, and I look forward to finding out more about Facebook to make sure that the information about their users is not sent to Chinese servers.
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