Facebook Confirms Data Sharing Deals With Huawei, Lenovo, & Others

Facebook stresses that they carefully managed the access.

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The DJ at the Facebook data fiasco is keeping the party going. This week, Facebook confirmed that it has data sharing partnerships with at least four Chinese companies. One of those is Huawei, a company that has been under investigation for violating US sanctions on shipping goods.

“The news that Facebook provided privileged access to Facebook’s API to Chinese device makers like Huawei and TCL raises legitimate concerns, and I look forward to learning more about how Facebook ensured that information about their users was not sent to Chinese servers,” Senator Mark Warner said in a statement to Reuters. Warner is vice chairman of the Intelligence committee.

The report from Reuters confirms that Huawei, Lenovo, OPPO, and TCL Corp were among roughly 60 companies that received access to user data after signing contracts to make Facebook-like experiences for users.

Reuters also got a statement from a Facebook executive:

“Facebook along with many other U.S. tech companies have worked with them and other Chinese manufacturers to integrate their services onto these phones,” Francisco Varela, vice president of mobile partnerships for Facebook, said. “Facebook’s integrations with Huawei, Lenovo, OPPO and TCL were controlled from the get-go — and we approved the Facebook experiences these companies built.”

Allegedly, all of the data used via Huawei was stored on devices and not on the company's servers. No matter how the cards fall for this situation, it's yet another that puts an unkind spotlight on both Huawei and Facebook in their respective industries. Google isn't out of dodge either, as Wall Street Journal reports that Congress is taking a look into the tech giant's own relationship with Huawei.

Stay tuned to Shacknews for additional updates as the situation unfolds.

Charles Singletary Jr keeps the updates flowing as the News Editor, breaking stories while investigating the biggest topics in gaming and technology. He's pretty active on Twitter, so feel free to reach out to him @The_CSJR. Got a hot tip? Email him at Charles.Singletary@Shacknews.com.

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