Facebook ignited a flood of criticism last week when it began requiring mobile users to load its Messenger app for Android and iOS separate from its basic Facebook app.
Some users complained about having to use the separate app to send messages, photos or videos to their friends. Other users were concerned that the Messenger app stinks of Orwellian 1984-style invasions of privacy.
Concerned users claim the app could give Facebook the use of their phones and tablets to take photos and to make phone calls without their specific approval. "Beware!" wrote user Rasikh J on Saturday in a review of the app in the Google Play store. On Thursday, a user identified as G Kay wrote in the iOS App Store about the app: "What Facebook can do through this app scares the crap out of me...They can access my microphone, camera and contacts.''
The truth of how the Messenger app uses a device's phone and camera is apparently far less insidious than many have thought, according to Facebook.
Facebook said that the "permissions" language used in the Google Play Store to describe how Messenger functions with a user's phone or camera was written by Android officials, not Facebook, to describe a large array of apps, not just Messenger.
While the Messenger app is basically the same app as in iOS, there are no blanket permissions laid out for iOS users as there are for permissions at the start-up of the Android-based Messenger app. As a result, the privacy dangers many users are concerned about aren't as easily evident in the iOS version, although some iPhone users are still concerned about privacy breaches.
Facebook noted in an email to Computerworld that the Android permissions language for a wide range of apps was recently updated. Google verified that a permissions language update occurred in May as part of an attempt to make permissions easier for users to understand. A perusal of the updated changes reveals that most of the new Android language for the Messenger app is considerably broader and more vague than when first described in a Huffington Post blog last December.
Facebook posted a statement to users on Aug. 6 that attempts to clarify how the Messenger app will use five functions of a phone or tablet for taking photos, making calls and more. "Keep in in mind that Android controls the way the permissions are named, and the way they're named doesn't necessarily reflect the way the Messenger app and other apps use them," Facebook said.
Here's how Facebook says its Messenger app uses various device functions, with the bold portion the actual permission that Android requests followed by how Messenger describes its use of each function:
- Take pictures and videos: This permission allows you to take photos and videos within the Messenger app to easily send to your friends and other contacts
- Record audio: This permission allows you to send voice messages, make free voice calls, and send videos within Messenger
- Directly call phone numbers: This permission allows you to call a Messenger contact by tapping on the person's phone number, found in a menu within your message thread with the person
- Receive text messages (SMS): If you add a phone number to your Messenger account, this allows you to confirm your phone number by finding the confirmation code that we send via text message
- Read your contacts: This permission allows you to add your phone contacts as Messenger contacts if you choose to do so. You can always stop syncing your phone contacts by going to your Messenger settings
Facebook's latest descriptions are vastly different from how Messenger uses the camera and phone than how the Android permissions were described for Messenger in December. At the time, the permissions were reported by the Huffington Post as "allowing the app to call phone numbers without your invention" and allowing the app "to take pictures and videos with the camera...at any time without your confirmation."