SHOW ME the MONEY: Payment code spied in Facebook Messenger Peer-to-Peer (P2P) payments code has been spotted in Facebook's Messenger app by Andrew Aude, a Stanford student: but the massive advertising company has refused to confirm it's working on payments technology. "We don’t comment on rumour or speculation," a spokesman at the free content ad network told The Register when quizzed …
My experience on both iPad and Android:
1) Tried the separate messenger once they'd ripped the usable one out of the main app.
2) Looked at the excessive privacy access it wanted.
3) Raised my eyebrows in a correspondly excessive manner.
4) Deleted it.
5) Reverted to using web browser.
It doesn't know who's calling you, but it does recognise when your phones in use.
This can be used for several reason, the main reason is for when you use the integrated phone feature, so that you can phone your friend from the app.
If your friend has trusted their number to FB then you can buzz them from the app.
these permissions are the same or very similar to most other messaging apps, including WhatsApp, Snapchat and Instagram.
It isn't what they do with the permissions *now*, it's what they *can* do with them in the future which is what concerns people.
Given the lack of granularity in Android permissions (which are pretty much all or nothing), I'd certainly prefer "nothing" in cases like this given the way FB considers you to be the product.
But the permission they are asking for means that they CAN get that information without needing to request it in future. It might be that Android permissions are too broad but it still allows FB to run rampant over your phone and your personal data.
WOW - do all you down voters work on a helpdesk?
I find your lack of knowledge quite incredible, and some of your opinions are backward to say the least.
Apps on phones need to know what the device is doing for a start.
If it's to use any function of the phone then it needs access to them. A developer doesn't need to write a service for handling text messages when the phone OS already has that, they don't need to write a service to launch the dialler, attach photo's operate the camera etc etc.
However, I understand why some of you are scared, worried, afraid. The simple thing for you to do is grab some tin foil and fashion a hat. Maybe wrap your phone in some and think of a different career choice. I hear the golden arches are recruiting.
> Apps on phones need to know what the device is doing for a start.
Can you not see the difference between knowing if the phone owner is making a call and knowing *who* the owner is calling?
The former I (probably) don't have an issue with. The latter I do have an issue with. The problem is that *I* don't get the choice if I can only grant an "all or nothing" permission.
"There isn't anything sinister in the permissions."
Are you quoting that directly from the T&C?
Perhaps there isn't, for now. But facebook has a bit of a history of changing the rules whenever it suits them, without telling their users. So once you've granted permission for "nothing sinister" it may come as a bit of a shock when the next, further, intrusion into your life is also, by facebook's reckoning, "nothing sinister".
I'd rather be in charge of where the line is drawn, and stick to it.
@Just Enough
Reminds me of going on dates as a teenager. I've got my date in the back seat of my old man's car, and we are talking a bit, a little kissing, then I try for a little more, get my hand slapped trying to feel her up, try again later and get a bit further, by midnight we were both searching for our underpants under the seat...
I guess we both knew where the lines were, but FB doesn't......
Excessive permissions seem to be the standard, but there's usually a good reason for having call access (making calls from the app, as has been mentioned above). I got more cross with the default behaviour of facebook messenger, where it splurts "chat heads" all over the screen, obscuring anything and everything. Shitty, shitty app that did not need to be a standalone entity.
I can understand the need for some of the permissions, such as access to the camera and storage so you can post photos. But I'd love to see their explanation for why it needs to be able to modify contact information, read text messages, change network connections, or modify battery information.
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