You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook.

Millions of smartphone users reveal and save some of their confidential information to their apps in their phones, they share their most intimate secrets such as when they want to work on their belly fat, or the price of the house they checked out last weekend. Other popular apps that most women use know users' body weight, blood pressure, menstrual cycles, and pregnancy status. These apps are used to keep track of their personal life, but aren't as secured as users think they are.

The Wall Street Journal testing reveals how the social-media giant collects a wide range of private data from developers. It is unknown to most people that data is being shared with someone else in this case Facebook Inc. The social-media giant is somehow able to collect users' personal information from different popular smartphone apps after seconds of users entering it, even if the user has no connection to Facebook. It has been proven that many popular apps share information to Facebook such as when the users open the app or sometimes even what they do inside. The Journal tests found at least 11 apps sent Facebook potentially sensitive information about how users behaved or actual data they entered.

Facebook is currently under an inspection from Washington and European regulators for how it treats the information of users and nonusers alike. It has also been fined for allowing now defunct political-data firm Cambridge Analytica illicit access to users' data and has drawn criticism for giving companies special access to user records well after it said it had walled off that information. 

 

The Journal's testing showed that Facebook software collects data from many apps even if no Facebook account is used to log in and if the end user isn't a Facebook member.

Facebook had instructed app developers not to send "health, financial information or other categories of sensitive information" since this not only appears to violate its business terms but its users might also regard as sensitive.

Facebook tells its business partners it uses customer data collected from apps to personalize ads and content on Facebook and to conduct market research, among other things.

I chose this article because I personally use the Flo app, and other health apps so I found it very interesting that these famous apps are sharing our personal information with Facebook. I would never imagine that such popular apps would share users' most confidential information but then again this is how they target people with ads online.