iPhone protected you from Facebook call scraping. Android, not so much

There are two major philosophical differences between Google and Apple which led to this outcome.<p>The first is the difference in business model, i.e. advertising versus whole-product.<p>The second is that Google starts with a permissive ecosystem mindset and locks stuff down as they go along; Apple starts with a conservative mindset and opens stuff up as they go along. Neither approach is inherently better than the other—the competing platforms are converging towards equilibrium—but Apple&#x27;s approach does prove to have the upper hand when it comes to consumer privacy.

The app would have been trivially considered a malware if the same thing happened in Windows, where the app was traditionally allowed to access anything within the basic privilieges---just about anything. One can (rightly) blame Windows (and also Android) for allowing that, but more importantly, the Facebook app would have to be treated in the same way after all.

Now my paranoia about never using Facebook from my phone is retroactively justified.

&gt; More recent versions of Android should prevent this kind of data collection.<p>So the title made me think all Android are exposed to Facebook phone data scraping.<p>But considering how slow it is for Android devices to upgrade to the latest, it&#x27;s probably still a sad state.

This updated piece by Android Police [1] provides some more pieces of information (see the bottom of the article for the updates):<p>- The company [Facebook] reiterated that it wasn&#x27;t saving the actual content of calls or SMS&#x2F;MMS messages—something neither Ars Technica nor we claimed, but presumably other outlets did.<p>- It&#x27;s actually a part of Facebook Lite and Messenger (and users can opt out [...] respectively). Facebook considers the data collection opt-in since the apps in question directly ask if you&#x27;d like to upload that information during setup.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.androidpolice.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;03&#x2F;25&#x2F;facebook-gathering-call-sms-mms-metadata-years-via-app&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.androidpolice.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;03&#x2F;25&#x2F;facebook-gathering-...</a>

LineageOS prevents this type of access. If an application needs access to your phone or your contacts, you need to explicitly permit it to do so during execution. if you want to do this more than once, you need to set it up in the security options for the application in the settings menu.

Are they seriously smart enough to collect this data but stupid enough to dump it in an archive copy?

While this may be true, Rene Ritchie certainly has his own agenda here.

I was a Facebook user before I have my first Android phone, it was on 4.0.3 ICS, then I&#x27;m on 4.3, 4.4, 5.0, 6.0, 7.1...etc, and before I delete my Facebook account, I see no call logs in the backup data archive downloaded from Facebook, guess what, there&#x27;s at some point, some users just simply say yes to let Facebook &#x27;manage&#x27; your SMS, or calls, if an Android user&#x27;s call log got scrapped, it&#x27;s partially his&#x2F;her own fault.

As an iPhone user I’d like to think iOS does not allow this. However, I understand there’s a private API that allows larger companies access to functions that are not available to regular developers. It allows them access to the microphone without the red bar showing even when there’s not a call. Like others have, I’ve received ads for products spoken about near my phone but never typed into a device I own or on my router.