Study: Facebook’s Top Three Apps Tie For Least Respect For Privacy

Facebook’s entire business model is built on hoovering up as much user data as possible in order to monetize it with advertisers. However, it’s always shocking to see just how little Facebook respects our privacy. For example, a recent study from Surfshack analyzed the web’s top apps to see which ones were the most data-hungry, judging them by categories including contact info, location, purchases, user consent, and more. Not surprisingly, Facebook’s top apps all tied for the worst performance.

According to the study, the Facebook app, Messenger and Facebook-owned Instagram have the least respect for user privacy out of all the apps examined. While this is obviously troubling, the study’s authors also noted that this could provide a wake-up call for people to decide just how much of their info they’re willing to give up.

“Everyone would like their private data to remain private, but it takes effort to overcome the momentum of existing habits,” the authors wrote. “But if it may be near-impossible to function in the modern world without leaving a data trail, this just puts greater emphasis on the need to be informed and apply critical thinking to your participation in the data society.”

At this point, most savvy users understand that Facebook has an endless appetite for our private data. It really is up to individual users to decide how they want to proceed — because Facebook’s business model will never change.




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