Skip to main content

Facebook let advertisers target you using two-factor authentication numbers

Josh Edelson/Digital Trends

We finally have some details about the $5 billion settlement between the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) — and exactly how Facebook might have violated your privacy.

The Washington Post reports that the yet-to-be-released complaint that will accompany the settlement focuses on two privacy violations. The first involves Facebook’s two-factor authentication security feature, which allows users to log in and verify their identity through a text message code sent to the phone number that they enter. Allegedly, advertisers used these phone numbers to target Facebook users without their consent. 

The other violation alleges that Facebook misled 30 million users about their ability to turn off a tool that offers tagging suggestions by identifying users in photos. Consumer Reports first reported in May that some Facebook users might lack the ability to turn off facial recognition. As a result, Consumer Reports filed a complaint to the FTC. 

These two violations are expected to be announced on Wednesday through a compliant tied to the settlement from earlier this month, the Post reports. The agreement between the FTC and Facebook requires the social network to submit federal oversight of its business practices to certify that the network is handling user data properly. The $5 billion settlement would be the largest-ever FTC fine against a technology company, dwarfing $22.5 million fine against Google in 2012. That said, it’s just a small chunk of the $55 billion in revenue Facebook made in 2018. 

In the past year, Facebook has come under fire for the way it treats users’ private data. The FTC began looking into Facebook seriously after the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal that involved as many as 87 million users’ data. More recent privacy and security flaws that have hit the tech giant include issues with unauthorized adults accessing chats in its Messenger Kids app and a security breach that left 50 million accounts compromised. 

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in March that the social network now wants to focus on private interactions and encryption to provide better security for its users. According to the Post, the FTC did not question Zuckerberg himself during the investigation that led to this settlement.

A spokesperson for the FTC declined to comment about the settlement. We also reached out to Facebook and will update this story if we hear back.

Update 7/25: Updated headline to clarify that advertisers could target users based on their two-factor authentication phone numbers, not see the numbers.

Editors' Recommendations

Allison Matyus
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Allison Matyus is a general news reporter at Digital Trends. She covers any and all tech news, including issues around social…
Facebook has suspended ‘tens of thousands’ of apps over private data use
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in Washington, D.C.

Facebook says it has suspended “tens of thousands” of apps suspected of misusing private user data amid an investigation that it began last year following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The social media giant promised in March 2018 to take a look at all of the apps on Facebook that had access to large amounts of user information prior to when it changed its policy in 2014. The resulting suspensions were announced in a blog post on Friday. The investigation began after right-wing political analytics firm Cambridge Analytica improperly mined data from 87 million Facebook users. 
"Our App Developer Investigation is by no means finished. But there is meaningful progress to report so far," Ime Archibong, Facebook's vice president of product partnerships, wrote in the blog post. "To date, this investigation has addressed millions of apps. Of those, tens of thousands have been suspended for a variety of reasons while we continue to investigate."
Facebook said that it initially selected apps for investigation based on their user numbers, as well as how much data they could access from user accounts. It has since broadened that investigation to include apps that it thinks have the potential to abuse its policies, a process that involves both a background investigation of the developer, as well as an analysis of the app’s activity on the platform.
The investigation, Archibong wrote, involved “hundreds of people: Attorneys, external investigators, data scientists, engineers, policy specialists, platform partners, and other teams across the company.” 
While Facebook says that it removed tens of thousands of apps, it notes that the suspended apps, while plentiful, were only created by roughly 400 developers. An app being suspended doesn’t mean that it was necessarily posing a threat to people, and many were still in their testing phase when they were suspended, so they were never readily available to Facebook’s wider user base.
Facebook says it is not unusual for developers to have multiple test apps that never get rolled out. In some cases, apps were suspended because the developer did not respond to a request for information from Facebook, not due to any actual policy violations. One app, myPersonality, apparently shared information with researchers and companies but refused to take part in Facebook's audit -- so it was banned
The post goes on to says that Facebook hasn’t confirmed any other instances of misuse to date other than those it has already revealed to the public and that it has taken legal action against a handful of apps for a number of different reasons.
Beyond the investigation, Facebook says it has “made widespread improvements to how we evaluate and set policies for all developers that build on our platforms.” It also removed a number of APIs and has increased the number of people that work on its investigations team in order to better handle them in the future.

Read more
Facebook launches interactive augmented reality ads that let you try on makeup
Facebook Interactive Ads

Some of the new Facebook ads in action. Facebook

Facebook is rolling out new interactive ads to its News Feed that include augmented reality experiences that let you play games or see how makeup looks on your skin.

Read more
Facebook’s new oversight board could overturn Mark Zuckerberg’s decisions
facebook independent oversight board mark zuckerberg  viva tech start up

Facebook on Tuesday released more details about its Supreme Court for content decisions -- an oversight board that would have the ability to overrule CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In blog post that was updated Tuesday, Brent Harris, Director of Governance and Global Affairs at Facebook, wrote that the new Independent Oversight Board will review appeals to its policy decisions and is meant to be completely separate from Facebook leadership.

Read more