Facebook's Plan to Partner With Banks Raises Privacy Concerns
By Erin Corbett, Fortune
08 August 18
facebook has asked big banks to share their customers' detailed financial
records with it in an effort to offer new financial and commerce services
through Facebook Messenger, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The social media network wants access to card transactions and checking
account balances along with information about where its users shop, the
report said, citing people familiar with the matter.
By helping friends and family do more than chat online, Facebook hopes to
increase the amount of time that users spend with its Messenger app. Banks
would get access to Facebook user information, in exchange for sharing their
financial data.
Gennie Gebhart, a Researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a
digital civil liberties organization, told Fortune that this push to change
user habits and increase their interactions with businesses through the
Messenger app is dangerous for user privacy.
"Facebook already has mountains of information about our social networks,
physical movements, and activity online. Do we really want to give Facebook
greater insight into our finances and purchases, too?," Gebhart said. "When
we collapse all these interactions into one service, we risk giving Facebook
a more and more detailed picture of who we are."
According to Gebhart, more user information centralized on one single
platform also makes information more "vulnerable to unauthorized sharing or
leaking" and can make "users easier to manipulate."
Facebook still faces criticism after revelations that political data firm
Cambridge Analytica harvested the personal data of as many as 87 million
Facebook users without their consent. The data was later used to garner
support for the Brexit campaign and Donald Trump's 2016 presidential
campaign.
Facebook said it would not use any information provided by banks for
targeted ads, and would not share it with third parties.
"We don't use purchase data from banks or credit card companies for ads,"
said Facebook spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana.
In a statement reported by CNBC, a Facebook spokesperson clarified that the
company is not "actively asking financial services companies for financial
transaction data." Rather, banks could offer real-time customer service to
users through Facebook Messenger, according to the statement.
"The idea is that messaging with a bank can be better than waiting on hold
over the phone - and it's completely opt-in," the spokesperson said, adding
that keeping people's information safe is critical to its partnerships with
any banking institutions.
In the last year, Facebook has discussed potential partnerships with
JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup and U.S. Bancorp.
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