LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Facebook had undisclosed deals with around 150 companies and gave them privileged access to user data during 2017 in practices it had agreed to scrap back in 2014, according to a report on Wednesday.
Companies which had this kind of access as of 2017 included Amazon, Spotify, Netflix, Apple, Yandex, Sony and Microsoft, the New York Times reported.

The documents shown to the NYT revealed that Amazon was able to get people's names and emails via their Facebook friends, something which the social media platform had vowed to put an end to in 2014.

Other activities include allowing others' products the ability to read users' private messages and to see the names, contact details and activities of their friends.

In return Amazon reportedly granted Facebook contact lists to help the social network suggest more friend recommendations.

Facebook said in a statement: "Our integration partners had to get authorization from people. You would have had to sign in with your Facebook account to use the integration offered by Apple, Amazon or another integration partner."

Amazon told the Times that it had used user data appropriately and it told Business Insider that "Amazon uses APIs provided by Facebook in order to enable Facebook experiences" for their products, for example by "giving customers the option to sync Facebook contacts on an Amazon Tablet. We use information only in accordance with our privacy policy."

Nevertheless, Facebook has acknowledged again that it should have prevented third parties from being able to access users' data freely, after publicly announcing that it had ended the privilege for security reasons.

Facebook has recently been involved in a series of privacy scandals, that kicked off in March with revelations that a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, improperly used Facebook data help President Trump's 2016 campaign for the US general elections.

Most recently Facebook testified at an international inquiry on disinformation led by the Digital Culture Media and Sports Committee in London. The chair of the committee MP Damian Collins said regarding the investigation: "This latest investigation adds to the evidence published earlier this month by the DCMS select Committee, from documents we received from the American app developer, Six4Three.

"Facebook should come back in front of the Committee to explain how their policies work on access to user data, and whether policies are a breach of data privacy law, as it would appear that user data was made available to firms without the informed consent of the user having been given. I feel that we have been given misleading responses by the company when we have asked these questions during previous evidence sessions.

"The Competition authorities should also investigate how Facebook decides which companies have access to user data and which don't. Given the dominant market position they enjoy in social media, this gives real concerns about whether they are behaving as a monopoly, exercising their considerable power to further dominate the commercial environment in which they trade; making some businesses, and breaking others in the process."

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