Facebook made deals with 60 device makers that gave them access to users’ data

Facebook Inc. made agreements with at least 60 makers of phones and other devices that gave them access to the personal information of users’ friends without their consent, the New York Times reported Monday, citing company officials.

The companies involved include Apple Inc. BlackBerry Ltd. Microsoft Corp.  and Amazon.com Inc. the paper reported. The agreements allowed Facebook to expand its reach and let device makers offer customers features, such as messaging, “like” buttons and address books.

The scope of the partnerships has not been reported before and raises concerns about the company’s privacy protections, as well as compliance with a 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission.

Most of the agreements are still in place, though Facebook  began to wind them down in April, after coming under scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators over data used by Cambridge Analytica, which has declared bankruptcy.

Facebook has said that the access granted to Cambrdige Analytica, a political consultancy, in 2014 was cut off by 2015, when the company explicitly banned developers from collecting data on users’ friend. But it did not disclose that the makers of phones and tablets were excluded from the ban.

Facebook said Monday in a blog post that it “controlled [APIs] tightly from the get-go” and that the device makers it partnered with “signed agreements that prevented people’s Facebook information from being used for any other purpose than to recreate Facebook-like experiences.”

Facebook also said that its team had to approve these new “experiences” and that device partners like Apple Iand Amazon could not “integrate the user’s Facebook features with their devices without the user’s permission.”

Facebook said that the private APIs in question were “very different from the public APIs used by third-party developers, like Aleksandr Kogan” of Cambridge Analytica.

The New York Times said that one of its reporters, Michael LaForgia, used the Hub app on a blackberry Z10 to log into Facebook and found the app was able to retrieve detailed data on 556 of his friends. The data included relationship status, religious and political leanings and events they planned to attend.

Twitter was predictably unhappy about the news.

Shares of Facebook were down 1% in early trade, but are up 26% over the past 12 months, while the S&P 500 index  has gained 12% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average  has added 17%.