Facebook’s latest scandal, involving hardware companies having access to personal data, apparently extended to Chinese firms like Huawei.
Days after a possible scandal over data-sharing partnerships with dozens of hardware companies, Facebook on Tuesday admitted to similar deals with foreign companies the U. S. government does not trust. Facebook reportedly provided the same type of controversial data access to Apple and BlackBerry as it did to Huawei, a Chinese tech giant that had been investigated for possible espionage in 2012 by the House Intelligence Committee.
Facebook made deals with Huawei and other Chinese companies such as Lenovo and TCL over the course of at least the past eight years, the New York Times reported. The deals allowed those companies wide-ranging access to personal information about Facebook users and their friends, including relationship statuses, job histories and political alignments.
Facebook, for its part, continued to insist the data was never abused by the companies, claiming it only ever lived locally on the devices used to access it, never on company servers. The company told the Times that its deal with Huawei would be terminated by the end of this week.
Huawei is one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies, though it has not gained much of a foothold in the U.
