The giant social media Facebook, accused of selling user data to companies and not checking whether those data used abusively or not, appeared to have recorded cell phone conversations and text message for those who downloaded the Facebook application on their phones.

According to the Guardian newspaper, people who join the "Delete Facebook" campaign and try to delete the account on the platform, offered as, "You may want to download a copy of your information from Facebook".

Users who want to delete their account and download their data reported unease at the data they had discovered being logged, including the contacts in their address books, their calendars, and their friends’ birthdays.

In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson explained why contacts were uploaded. “The most important part of apps and services that help you make connections is to make it easy to find the people you want to connect with. So, the first time you sign in on your phone to a messaging or social app, it’s a widely used practice to begin by uploading your phone contacts,” it said

We made mistakes: Zuckerberg

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Sunday took out full-page ads in seven British newspapers and three American ones to apologize for the ongoing Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, which was used irregularly as to influence the US presidential election in the post.

"Cell phones are tracking devices"

"The problem is not just a single platform like Facebook, doing surveillance problems or experimenting with the public. The problem is that companies that are constantly following and profiling people, misuse of the power provided by this widespread knowledge of exploitation," says experts.

"So if you’re worried about this harvesting of Facebook data, you should also be worried about the ways in which third parties are tracking and profiling you. These companies, that you aren’t even aware of, hold vast amounts of very personal, very intimate information about you," said Frederike Kaltheuner, who leads Privacy International’s Data Programme.

ILKHA