Is Facebook Messenger application tracking your privacy?

"Messenger appears to have more spyware type code in it intended specifically for enterprise surveillance."

September 19, 2014 12:11 pm | Updated 12:28 pm IST - New York

A spokesperson for the social networking site, however, denied the claim.

A spokesperson for the social networking site, however, denied the claim.

The new Facebook Messenger app that has been downloaded over 500 million times on Android-based devices, may have spyware that keeps an eye on your chats and other information, claims an internet security specialist.

According to Jonathan Zdziarski, “messenger appears to have more spyware type code in it intended specifically for enterprise surveillance”, the website motherboard.com reported.

“There is a lot of code that suggests Facebook is running analytics on nearly everything it possibly can monitor on your device,” Zdziarski said in a twitter post.

After looking through the binary, Zdziarski said the app logs almost everything a user is doing.

A spokesperson for the social networking site, however, denied the claim.

“Privacy is core to our approach with Messenger and like any developer, we analyse usage trends to make our apps better, faster, and more efficient,” the spokesperson told Gizmodo .

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.