NYT: Facebook offered big tech

firms more user data than

previously revealed

New York (CNN Business) — Facebook offered more of its users' data to
companies including Microsoft and Amazon than it has admitted,
according to a new report by The New York Times.

The Times reported late Tuesday that it obtained internal Facebook (FB)
documents that show how the social media giant arranged to share data
with more than 150 companies. The deals helped Facebook gain more
users, according to the report, and its partners were able to add new
features to their products while effectively avoiding Facebook's usual
privacy rules.

Many of the partnerships ended years ago, but the details reported by
the Times are striking.

Amazon (AMZN) got access to Facebook users' names and contact

information through their friends on the social network, according to the
report, while Microsoft's (MSFT) search engine Bing was allowed to "see
the names of virtually all Facebook users' friends without consent."
Streaming services Netflix (NFLX) and Spotify (SPOT) had the "ability to
read Facebook users' private messages," it said.

CNN has not independently viewed

the internal documents obtained by
the Times.

Despite assurances from Facebook

CEO Mark Zuckerberg that people
"have complete control" over who
sees their content, The Times said the internal documents and interviews
with 50 former Facebook employees indicated that the company still
gave other firms access to user data.
The company's partnerships with Amazon and Apple (AAPL) are still
continuing today.
The revelations come at a trying time for Facebook, which has faced a
litany of criticism over how it handles user data. The social network said
in April that data firm Cambridge Analytica may have harvested
information on as many as 87 million users without their knowledge. In
October, Facebook revealed that hackers gained access to the phone
numbers and email addresses of almost 30 million of its users.

In response to the Times report, Facebook's director of privacy and

public policy, Steve Satterfield, said in a statement that its partners "don't
get to ignore people's privacy settings."

Facebook has 'work to do' to regain trust

"Over the years, we've partnered with other companies so people can
use Facebook on devices and platforms that we don't support ourselves,"
he said. "Unlike a game, streaming music service, or other third-party
app, which offer experiences that are independent of Facebook, these
partners can only offer specific Facebook features and are unable to use
information for independent purposes."
Facebook knows it's "got work to do to regain people's trust," Satterfield
added. "Partnerships are one area of focus and, as we've said, we're
winding down the integration partnerships that were built to help people
access Facebook."

The Times said the documents and interviews "raise questions about
whether Facebook ran afoul of a 2011 consent agreement with the
Federal Trade Commission that barred the social network from sharing
user data without explicit permission."

Satterfield said, the Times reported, that the 2011 FTC agreement "did
not require the social network to secure users' consent before sharing
data because Facebook considered the partners extensions of itself —
service providers that allowed users to interact with their Facebook
friends."

In a separate statement posted on Facebook's website, the company said

it had not violated the FTC agreement.

"To be clear: none of these partnerships or features gave companies

access to information without people's permission, nor did they violate
our 2012 settlement with the FTC," wrote Konstantinos Papamiltiadis,
Facebook's director of developer platforms and programs.

Papamiltiadis said, however, that "we recognize that we've needed tighter
management over how partners and developers can access information."

Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Apple and Spotify respond

An Amazon spokesman said in a statement to CNN that it uses the

software interfaces "provided by Facebook in order to enable Facebook
experiences for our products," such as giving "customers the option to
sync Facebook contacts on an Amazon Tablet."

Amazon uses the information in accordance with its own privacy policy,
he said.
 Microsoft said that data supplied by
Facebook stopped appearing in Bing
search results after the contract
between the two companies ended in
February 2016.

"Throughout our engagement with

Facebook, we respected all user preferences," Microsoft said in a
statement.

Netflix said that it launched a feature in 2014 that "enabled members to

recommend TV shows and movies to their Facebook friends via
Messenger or Netflix," but that "at no time did we access people's private
messages on Facebook, or ask for the ability to do so."

The feature "was never that popular so we shut the feature down in
2015," Netflix said in a statement.

An Apple spokesman referred CNN to a paragraph in the Times article

citing Apple officials as saying they were unaware that Facebook had
granted the company's devices any special access. Any shared data
would remain on the devices and be available to anyone other than the
users, according to Apple.

Spotify said in a statement that its

integration with Facebook was
designed to help users share and
discover music.

"Previously, when users shared music

from Spotify, they could add on text
that was visible to Spotify," the statement said. "This has since been
discontinued. We have no evidence that Spotify ever accessed users'
private Facebook messages."

Most of the companies with which Facebook shared data under the
arrangements were tech firms such as "online retailers and entertainment
sites," according to the report, but they also included automakers and
media organizations. The Times reported that it was one of those media
groups.

Donie O'Sullivan contributed to this report.