Facebook Is Under Criminal Investigation Over Data Deals

The New York Times reports that a criminal investigation into Facebook’s data-sharing deals with mobile computing devices makers including smartphones and tablets.

With those deals, Facebook let device makers which include Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple access users’ data, from their friend lists to their contact information, and sometimes to go as far as private messages. Most of the time, the information was accessed without the user’s consent.

A grand jury in New York has got subpoenas for information on these kinds of agreements from two smartphone other devices makers.

In an interview with the Times, a Facebook spokesperson said:

This criminal investigation news is the latest in Facebook’s series of controversies. Facebook has been trying to restore its public image after the Cambridge Analytica incident. There is more evidence showing how its social network platform has been exploited to spread false information during the US Presidential elections in 2016.

On Wednesday, after hours of trading, Facebook’s stock fell 1.5%.

To make the matter worse, Facebook and other related social networks like WhatsApp, Instagram suffered one of history’s worst technical outages which lead to users as well as advertisers unable to gain access to the site.

Facebook is facing fines that worth multi-billion-dollar to settle privacy investigations carried out by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and other agencies. For the giant social network, a criminal investigation would worsen the situation.

In December 2018, after the Times reported the deals of Facebook, the company explained how these partnerships were needed for the enabling of outside apps’ certain social features, for example, sharing a Spotify song via Facebook Messenger.

The blog post read:

Most of these partnerships have come to an end over the last few years.

The United States Department of Justice, as well as Facebook’s representatives, refused to give any comments on the report.