Android Facebook Messenger App Privacy Settings: Security Guaranteed

Android Facebook Messenger App Privacy Settings: Security Guaranteed

Over the last couple of years smartphone users have become more and more aware of what their rights are and how to question stuff that looks fishy. Online forums, app review, and official security pages for many renowned companies across the world are filled with such concerns and officials have to address those in one way or the other.

Last year, Facebook took many big decisions and two of them were purchasing What's App and developing a new messaging app called the Messenger. Prior to this application, users could view and reply to Facebook message through the existing app only but Facebook decided to split these services, making users across the world download the Messenger forcefully. You now get a notification in the original Facebook app about a message but you cannot view it with Messenger app.

If this was not enough, this new application causes many android app privacy issues by asking permissions to access messages, microphone, contacts, GPS, photos, and more. Obviously that did not go well with any Android smartphone owner and they now seek absolute security settings to deal with the issues.  

Firstly, it is important to understand why Facebook asks for such permissions and whether you should grant them. Mark Zuckerberg has now official set up a page explaining these details. According to this page, many applications ask for such permissions, and Facebook is not the first one. As a matter of fact, it wants to access photos so you can share them, microphone so you can record and send audio messages, GPS to share locations, contacts to add people who are not already there, and text messages to verify the phone number without the need of typing alphanumeric code sent through SMS. In fact, Facebook maintains that the app cannot initiate any process without your permission on it.  

Moving forward, if you'd not like the app to function this way, there some easy Android settings to deal with it. Simply, go to 'Settings' and choose what services you want this Messenger app not to use. The procedure is in fact similar in other operating system platforms including iOS and Windows.     

 

 

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