Facebook Gave RBC, Other Companies Access to Additional Data About Users’ Friends

According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, Facebook granted a number of companies special access to additional data about users’ friends even after the point in 2015 when the company claimed it stopped sharing such data.

The report, which cites a number of court documents, notes that Facebook made a number of special agreements with certain companies to give them this access. The data includes phone numbers and “friend links,” which measures the degree of closeness between a user and their friends. Companies that got access to this data include RBC and Nissan.

In a statement, Facebook’s vice president of product partnerships Ime Archibong said:

“In 2014, all developers were given a year to switch to the new, more restricted version of the (app programming interface). A few developers including Nissan and RBC asked for a short extension — and those extensions ended several years ago.”

It is still unclear how long these companies actually had access to this data for and how many companies actually had this type of special access. This development is the latest in a series of revelations on Facebook’s data sharing practices.

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