How to find your call and SMS data collected by Facebook and stop it
The fresh controversy about Facebook is that the social media giant is accused of collecting call history, contact information and SMS data from Android devices. The company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed the action in a public post, thereby increasing the privacy concerns of the Android users.
While this information has surfaced online, Facebook has clearly revealed that it is collecting the user data in order to improve the user experience. And, the social media giant has made it clear that it does not sell the data or share the same with the third-party apps. Also, the company claims that it does not collect the content of the calls or text messages gathered from the Android devices.
Given that Facebook collects the calls logs and SMS details of Android users, the next question that would arise is to know what data has been gathered and prevent the same from happening henceforth.
Know what data has been collected
Step 1: Visit https://register.facebook.com/download/ from the desktop.
Step 2: This will open the General Account Settings menu and you need to click on ‘Download a copy' link from there.
Step 3: You will be redirected to the ‘Download your Information' page with the option ‘Share My Archive. Clicking on this will prepare your data for download. Once it is ready, you will get the option ‘Download Archive'.
Step 4: The data will be downloaded as a .zip file, you need to extract the files. Then click on HTML and contact_info from the options at the left below the profile photo.
Step 5: Now, scroll down to the bottom to find out the gathered call and SMS data. The document shows your data that the advertisers are using from Facebook under the Ads section.
Prevent Facebook from collecting data
It is stated that the data collection happens because data sync is turned on. So, if you want to stop the data collection, then you need to stop Facebook from syncing your contacts. To do so, click on your profile picture from Home at the top right corner. Then navigate to People → Synced Contacts. The users of Facebook Lite can do so by tapping the three-line icon → App Settings → Continuous Contacts Upload. You should tab the Sync Your Call and Text History option off from the settings. Also, you should remove the uploaded contacts from Messenger via the Manage Imported Contacts for Messenger page. You can remove the uploaded contacts from Messenger by hitting Delete All. You need to turn off the continuous syncing on all your devices where you use the Messenger app to prevent the data being uploaded again.
The fresh controversy about Facebook is that the social media giant is accused of collecting call history, contact information and SMS data from Android devices. The company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed the action in a public post, thereby increasing the privacy concerns of the Android users.
While this information has surfaced online, Facebook has clearly revealed that it is collecting the user data in order to improve the user experience. And, the social media giant has made it clear that it does not sell the data or share the same with the third-party apps. Also, the company claims that it does not collect the content of the calls or text messages gathered from the Android devices.
Given that Facebook collects the calls logs and SMS details of Android users, the next question that would arise is to know what data has been gathered and prevent the same from happening henceforth.
Know what data has been collected
Step 1: Visit https://register.facebook.com/download/ from the desktop.
Step 2: This will open the General Account Settings menu and you need to click on ‘Download a copy' link from there.
Step 3: You will be redirected to the ‘Download your Information' page with the option ‘Share My Archive. Clicking on this will prepare your data for download. Once it is ready, you will get the option ‘Download Archive'.
Step 4: The data will be downloaded as a .zip file, you need to extract the files. Then click on HTML and contact_info from the options at the left below the profile photo.
Step 5: Now, scroll down to the bottom to find out the gathered call and SMS data. The document shows your data that the advertisers are using from Facebook under the Ads section.
Prevent Facebook from collecting data
It is stated that the data collection happens because data sync is turned on. So, if you want to stop the data collection, then you need to stop Facebook from syncing your contacts. To do so, click on your profile picture from Home at the top right corner. Then navigate to People → Synced Contacts. The users of Facebook Lite can do so by tapping the three-line icon → App Settings → Continuous Contacts Upload. You should tab the Sync Your Call and Text History option off from the settings. Also, you should remove the uploaded contacts from Messenger via the Manage Imported Contacts for Messenger page. You can remove the uploaded contacts from Messenger by hitting Delete All. You need to turn off the continuous syncing on all your devices where you use the Messenger app to prevent the data being uploaded again.
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