As Facebook is currently embroiled in controversy surrounding its treatment of users’ personal information, a Bloomberg story draws attention to the fact that messages sent through Messenger are scanned by Facebook’s automatic tools.
A Facebook spokesperson told Bloomberg the site scans links and photos sent through the Messenger service in order to crack down on malicious links and child pornography. The spokesperson said, “For example, on Messenger, when you send a photo, our automated systems scan it using photo matching technology to detect known child exploitation imagery or when you send a link, we scan it for malware or viruses.”
The Facebook spokesperson clarified that there is not an third-party reading people’s conversations on Messenger, but Facebook employs “automated tools” that “can rapidly stop abusive behavior” on the site.
When speaking to Bloomberg, the Facebook spokesperson also tried to make it clear that the site was not scanning user’s personal chats with their friends; rather, if an individual reports something in the chat for violating the site’s community guidelines, then that is when the site would take action and analyze the individual messages.
Bloomberg explained:
The company told Bloomberg that while Messenger conversations are private, Facebook scans them and uses the same tools to prevent abuse there that it does on the social network more generally. All content must abide by the same "community standards." People can report posts or messages for violating those standards, which would prompt a review by the company’s “community operations” team. Automated tools can also do the work.
Although recent attention has been drawn to Facebook’s privacy settings, Facebook’s practice of scanning messages has been public information for years.
In 2012, Reuters reported on Facebook’s technology to catch pedophiles. Reuters noted that Facebook is just one of the companies that was, at the time, employing technology in order to ensnare pedophiles. A day later, the Daily Mail ran a headline reading, “Facebook monitors chat conversations and informs the police of anything suspicious -- but the privacy breach does catch paedophiles.” The New York Daily News also said the automatic software “designed to err on the side of monitoring caution.” It explained:
To minimize the risk of inappropriate surveillance the software and procedures are designed to err on the side of monitoring caution. The software analyzes suspicious sexual conversations between unlikely couples, such as people of drastically different ages. It then uses records of online chats from convicted predators to know what to flag.
Former Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan told Reuters, “We’ve never wanted to set up an environment where we have employees looking at private communications, so it’s really important that we use technology that has a very low false-positive rate.”
