Facebook Accused Of Reading Users? Text Messages

Ahead of Mobile World Congress and an appearance by Facebook to explain its next moves in mobile, the social networking giant is coming under increasing strain over its use of users' personal information. Mobile startups and operators are both fretting over the issue this week, as smartphones and the apps that come with them increasingly eclipse the feature phones of old. We've already seen how Path ignited the debate around privacy by uploading iPhone address books to its servers without explicit permission, just as many other apps have done without anyone realizing for some time. Path was by no means the only offender. The latest accusation is being leveled at Facebook. In today's Sunday Times newspaper, published out of London, a story (behind a paywall) alleges that Facebook has "admitted" to "reading text messages" during a trial to launch its own messaging service. Now, given that British Sunday newspapers have a tendency for crying wolf to help copy sales, we're trying to ascertain what the substance of this is.

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