BEIJING: Huawei has denied collecting data from Facebook users after the social media giant confirmed that the Chinese phone maker deemed a national security threat…
BEIJING: Huawei has denied collecting data from Facebook users after the social media giant confirmed that the Chinese phone maker deemed a national security threat by the US was among companies given access to user information.
Huawei was able to access Facebook data to get the leading social network to perform on its smartphones, the California-based company said.
“Facebook along with many other US tech companies have worked with them and other Chinese manufacturers to integrate their services onto these phones,” Facebook mobile partnerships leader Francisco Varela said in a statement on Tuesday (Jun 5).
“Given the interest from Congress, we wanted to make clear that all the information from these integrations with Huawei was stored on the device, not on Huawei’s servers.”
Before now-ubiquitous apps standardised the social media experience on smartphones, some 60 device makers including Amazon, Apple and Blackberry worked with Facebook to adapt interfaces for its website to their own phones, the social network said.
Facebook, which has been blocked in China since 2009, also had data-access deals with Chinese companies Lenovo, OPPO and TCL, according to Varela.
“Facebook’s integrations with Huawei, Lenovo, OPPO and TCL were controlled from the get-go,” Varela said.
Huawei said its cooperation with Facebook was to improve user services and denied collecting or storing user data.
“Like all leading smartphone providers, Huawei worked with Facebook to make Facebook’s services more convenient for users,” Huawei told AFP, adding that it “has never collected or stored any Facebook user data”.
