According to a New York Times report, more than 150 companies had deals with Facebook to obtain data without users’ consent.
The information shared is a lot more egregious than previously thought. Netflix and Spotify were given access to read private messages between users’ friends, and companies including Microsoft and Amazon were given email addresses and phone numbers for hundreds of millions of users per month, again without users’ consent. The report also stressed the complicity of companies in participating in such practices whereby privacy is sacrificed to increase revenue growth.