Facebook is reading user's text messages

[Speed Demon]

Internet giant Facebook is accessing smartphone users' personal text messages, an investigation revealed Sunday.

Facebook admitted reading text messages belonging to smartphone users who downloaded the social networking app and said that it was accessing the data as part of a trial to launch its own messaging service, The (London) Sunday Times reported.

Other well-known companies accessing smartphone users' personal data, such as text messages, include photo-sharing site Flickr, dating site Badoo and Yahoo Messenger, the paper said.

It claimed that some apps even allow companies to intercept phone calls, while others, such as YouTube, are capable of remotely accessing and operating users' smartphone cameras to take photographs or videos at any time.

Security app My Remote Lock and the app Tennis Juggling Game were among smaller companies' apps that may intercept users' calls, the paper said.

Emma Draper, of the Privacy International campaign group, said, "Your personal information is a precious commodity, and companies will go to great lengths to get their hands on as much of it as possible."

More than 400,000 apps can be downloaded to Android phones, and more than 500,000 are available for iPhones, with all apps downloaded from Apple's App Store covered by the same terms and conditions policy.

According to a YouGov poll for the newspaper, 70 percent of smartphone users rarely or never read the terms and conditions policy when they download an app.

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IMO none of the social bullshit sites can ever be trusted. This justifies my negative opinion about their motives and their moral responsibility, both corporate and as individuals. Basically, none.
Primary motive: Greed.

If you ever suddenly feel the need to communicate to the world what you had for breakfast this morning, and how well your bowel movement went, put an article in the National Enquirer. Tough to intercept that.

[SdC]

As a computer system engineer, and hobby programmer, I am extremely suspicious of the whole "app" movement. Of those zillions of apps, there are very few that could not simply run in a browser (on any platform). Why would I want that unknown code running all over my phone and not in a sandbox? 
It'll get a lot scarier as we "progress" along this path.
In the brain, there are protective mechanisms that allow connections between memories to be evaluated and blocked if necessary. This allows people to get back in a car after an accident, for instance.
With databases, there are no such limitations. Everything can be interconnected. There is no way to say to The Internet "I was just trying it out, but now I changed my mind, please forget it".

[phantasm777]

i  use FB but only on my desktop. i never log into sites via my cell, nor do i ever text. dont see any point, i can say a whole lot in the time it would take what i just typed here. when i know someone, i will phone, texting just doesnt make sence to me.

[Ferryman_1957]

I don't use FB, Twitter and the like and never will. Here's another good reason not to!