Not just the URL, but the entire content of the website. This is the information that Facebook stores every time you share a link through Messenger or a direct message (DM) on Instagram.
This is the potential potential privacy and security risk that app developers Tommy Mysk and Talal Haj Bakry discovered on Facebook’s private messaging platforms, adding to the questions Facebook already faced around WhatsApp.
According to researchersWhen a user shared a link on Messenger or in a direct message on Instagram and a preview was generated, the data is downloaded to the Facebook servers. This occurs even if the linked site contained many gigabytes of data, they argued.
“The Facebook servers download the content of any link sent through Messenger or Instagram DM. They can be invoices, contracts, medical records or anything that can be confidential, “wrote Mysk and Bakry in their report, released by Mashable.
In their work, both researchers also found that platforms such as Twitter, Slack and Discord did not download all the information from the links, but rather the information needed to generate a preview.
Error or intentionality?
Users regularly share links via private messaging platforms with sensitive data, but both researchers wondered why this information might be relevant to Facebook.
As they were not sure that Facebook knew what was happening, they contacted the social network to report what they discovered.
“We contacted Facebook in September 2020 about what we thought might be a privacy issue (and potentially a serious mistake), and they basically dismissed our concerns,” say Mysk and Bakry.
However, in early February 2020, investigators had a clue that the company was not only aware, but also premeditated.
The company disabled link previews on Facebook Messenger and Instagram. However, it did so only in Europe, to comply with the privacy laws of the European Union, which prohibit the storage of information from links that users share.
“Stopping this service in Europe strongly suggests that Facebook may be using this content for purposes other than generating previews,” they pointed out.
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