The Truth About the New Facebook Messenger: Know the Facts!

fb-messengerThere has been a lot of press coverage recently about the update made to the new Facebook Messenger app on iOS and Android. In this blog we hope to put readers minds at rest it’s not the empire of the state or big brother taking over quite yet…

Microphone Access

The reason why the Facebook Messenger needs permission to access the microphone of your phone is so you can place calls to your contacts via the app itself, not because Facebook are planning on recording you in secret as the language of the permission may suggest on install.

Access your SMS Messages & Call Log

The Facebook message does require a lot of permissions to run for example the permission that reads “Read your phone’s call log, including info about incoming and outgoing calls” is so Messenger can save your messages before an incoming Facebook messenger call interrupts the app, NOT so they can spy on your contacts and activity. The ” Call phone numbers and send SMS messages” permission is so the Messenger app can read a confirmation text to verify a new phone number, NOT so they can call random numbers without the users permission!

What is also worth remembering when it comes to the Android platform is it asks for your permission upfront on each access permission if you use the function or not. It does not mean the app will need the permission or access, it depends on how the individual user interacts with the Facebook messenger app. So this can appear daunting compared to the Apple iOS app where we don’t usually read what access is required and just hit install.

We hope this blog has been informative and put some worries to rest, remember if you choose not to install the new app simply carry on using the Facebook website directly to send your messages. Please share this article to put others minds at rest…