My suggestion: If you have messenger on your phone delete
it. Then re-download it and read the terms of agreement.
This news is actually about 5-7 years old. Notice what the
government has made cell phone makers do now? Notice you can't take the battery
out?
Cellphone users who attempt to install the Facebook
Messenger app are asked to agree to terms of service that allow the social
networking giant to use the microphone on their device to record audio at any
time without their permission.
As the screenshot below illustrates (click to enlarge),
users are made to accept an agreement that allows
Facebook to “record audio with the microphone… at any time without your
confirmation.”
The TOS also authorizes
Facebook to take videos and pictures using the phone's camera at any time
without permission, as well as directly calling numbers, again without
permission, that could incur charges.
But wait, there's more! Facebook can also “read your phone's
call log” and “read data about contacts stored on your phone, including the
frequency with which you've called, emailed or communicated in other ways with
specific individuals.”
Although most apps on Android and Apple devices include
similar terms to those pictured above, this is easily the most privacy-busting
set of mandates we've seen so far.
Since the vast majority of people will agree to these terms
without even reading them, cellphone users are agreeing to let Facebook monitor
them 24/7, green lighting the kind of open ended wiretap that would make even
the NSA jealous.
Other app companies are also requiring you to allow them to
approximate your location, send SMS messages from your phone that cost you
money, read your contacts, read your phone status and identity, get “full
network access” to your communications (in other words listen to your phone
calls), modify or delete the contents of your USB storage, and disable your
screen lock (the 4 digit code that password-protects your phone).
As we have previously highlighted, embedded microphones in
everything from Xbox Kinect consoles to high-tech street lights that can record
private conversations in real time represent the final nail in the coffin ofprivacy as the ‘Internet of things’ becomes a part of our daily lives.