Facebook Portal’s claims to protect user privacy are falling apart
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/17/17986992/facebook-portal-privacy-claims-ad-targeting
A week ago, when Facebook announced Portal, I noted that its launch had been stymied by trust issues. The recent news of a data breach affecting millions of users had activated the press’ cynicism about Facebook — which is never far from the surface even on a good day — and so Portal’s reception was defined almost entirely by its potential for privacy violations.
On Tuesday, before Portal could even materialize in stores, privacy issues once again came to the fore. The issue is Facebook’s system for collecting data for advertising purposes. When first writing about Portal, Recode’s Kurt Wagner wrote: “No data collected through Portal — even call log data or app usage data, like the fact that you listened to Spotify — will be used to target users with ads on Facebook.” Wagner was told that by the Facebook executives demonstrating Portal for him.