Facebook wants to "deepen user engagement" with Messenger, and to that end, it's been pitching America's giant banks on joint enterprises where Facebook will get to see all your financial info (especially info on where you're shopping and what you're buying) to help it suck you into using Messenger for longer.
In return, Facebook offered to let the banks do business through its platform, allowing Facebook users to transact business and manage their finance through Facebook Messenger.
However, it promised the banks that the financial data they turned over wouldn't be shared with third parties.
The news that Facebook might be able to access all this financial data resulted in a massive share-price surge, with shares up 3.5%, recovering much of the ground lost during Facebook's share-price bloodbath last month.
Facebook has told banks that the additional customer information could be used to offer services that might entice users to spend more time on Messenger, a person familiar with the discussions said. The company is trying to deepen user engagement: Investors shaved more than $120 billion from its market value in one day last month after it said its growth is starting to slow.
Facebook said it wouldn’t use the bank data for ad-targeting purposes or share it with third parties.
“We don’t use purchase data from banks or credit card companies for ads,” said spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana. “We also don’t have special relationships, partnerships, or contracts with banks or credit-card companies to use their customers’ purchase data for ads.”
Facebook to Banks: Give Us Your Data, We’ll Give You Our Users [Emily Glazer, Deepa Seetharaman and AnnaMaria Andriotis/WSJ]
The year is 2031, and I'm going to see Avengers 7 in 8K-vision. I hop in my Goober self-driving car and notice something strange – my location is displayed on the Goober Dashboard, even though I opted out of Google AlwaysTrack™! There's a complete disconnect between what the user interface is telling me and what actually happens without my knowledge or consent.
The Associated Press, working with Princeton University researchers, report that Google services on both Android and iOS devices store the user’s location irrespective of location data privacy settings. The company was caught after prompting a graduate student to rate a retail store they had recently visited. Google’s support page on the subject states: “You can […]
This week, I sat down for an hour-long interview with the Yale Privacy Lab's Sean O'Brien (MP3); Sean is a frequent Boing Boing contributor and I was honored that he invited me to be his guest on the very first episode of the Lab's new podcast.
From self-driving cars to Siri, we’ve already gotten a taste of what AI can do, and now this groundbreaking technology is making its way to education and revolutionizing the way we learn new languages. Mondly uses state-of-the-art speech recognition to help you speak foreign languages like a true local. Lifetime subscriptions are on sale for […]
We’ve all used Excel at some point in our careers, but chances are most of us have only scratched the surface of what this ubiquitous program can do. From automating simple tasks to presenting data through beautiful charts and PivotTables, Excel brings a ton of utility to the table that can make a huge impact […]
Traveling isn’t always the most comfortable experience, but at least you have your music to keep you company on those long flights. That is, until your chatty neighbor and that crying baby three seats over drown out your playlist. These Paww WaveSound 3 Noise-Cancelling Bluetooth Headphones block up to 20 decibels of audio, so you can […]
