When he stood before Congress in April, following yet another scandal at Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg declared 'We don't sell data to anyone'. 

That may technically be the case, but a new New York Times expose has revealed that Facebook gave 150 companies access to hundreds of millions of users' data without their knowledge or consent. 

Records obtained by the Times reveal that the amount of data Cambridge Analytica received from a Facebook app paled in comparison to the access that was granted to the social media giant's biggest partners, including Amazon, Spotify, and Netflix. 

Facebook gave Netflix, Spotify, and the Royal Bank of Canada the ability to read, write, and delete Facebook users' private messages and to see all participants on a thread, according to the internal records.

It also allowed Microsoft's search engine, known as Bing, to see the name of all Facebook users' friends without their consent. 

Amazon was allowed to obtain users' names and contact information through their friends, and Yahoo could view streams of friends' posts. 

As of last year, Sony, Microsoft, and Amazon could all obtain users' email addresses through their friends.  

Facebook never received monetary payment for this kind of access, which was permitted even if its users had disabled all data sharing on their profile. 

It has argued that these major companies were merely acting as an extension of Facebook, which is why any information that a user shared with friends on the site could be shared with the companies without their consent.

And Facebook denied on Tuesday night that these companies misused users' data, although it did not touch on the Times' revelation of just how much data their partners were given access to in the first place.

Mail Online

BDST: 1718 HRS, DEC 19, 2018
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