Let’s take a healthy sodium dose here, but London’s Sunday Times is alleging that Facebook has admitted to reading users’ text messages. They supposedly read the private SMS messages of users who downloaded the Facebook app on their smartphones.
This was allegedly in preparation for Facebook launching their own messaging service, but it is not known if it still continues today. Or, really, if it happened at all. The Sunday Times article is very scant in the way of evidence, quoting only unnamed sources, and then devolving into a rehashing of every other known privacy concern to pad the article. While it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if it happened — we’ve come to expect this sort of thing as of late — let’s hold off on the torches and pitchforks until we have some more substancial proof. We are reaching out to Facebook for a comment, and will update if we hear back. Then we can light our pitchforks and sharpen our torches. Or something like that. [Sunday Times via TechCrunch]