Facebook listened in on private talk

Facebook and other tech giants ­are being ­investigated for potential breaches of privacy laws.

Facebook hired contractors to listen to anonymous audio recordings that users were sending to each other over the company’s Messenger app. Picture: AP

Facebook and other tech giants ­including Microsoft are being ­investigated for potential breaches of privacy laws, following reve­lations they eavesdropped on seemingly private audio conver­sations to ­improve their products.

Facebook has confirmed it hired contractors to listen to anonymous audio recordings that users were sending to each other over the company’s Messenger app.

Since 2015, the company has ­offered a feature that uses artificial intelligence to automatically transcribe voice conversations to text, with human contractors then hired to transcribe random snippets to check accuracy.

While the feature was enabled only for US users, any Australian who had a conversation with a US Facebook Messenger user may have been exposed. The social media giant has about 15 million monthly users in Australia.

Facebook said the practice was “opt-in” and the company had ­recently ended it.

The news is the latest privacy headache for Facebook, which is already reeling from the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission’s digital platforms ­inquiry last month recommending strict new privacy regulations.

Daniel Muchow, head of cyber security at Sydney company RiskLogic, said the eavesdropping was another example of the social media giant taking advantage of users’ data for its own purposes.

“Even with all the protections in place in this example, it is doubtful many of us would be comfortable with recordings of our messages being accessed and transcribed by a complete stranger,” he said.

Mr Muchow said Facebook was milking user apathy when it came to what we posted and sent to apps, companies and other users.

“Facebook is to blame, but all of us need to accept some responsibility here too,” he said. “We’ve provided the information and opened the floodgates, so to speak. Nearly all of us do not read the terms and conditions of the apps, and this is made especially difficult by their legalistic, complex nature.’’

Travel blogger Anna Sherchand told The Australian she quit Facebook after seeing ads in her news feed about the topics she was talking about over calls made via Messenger.

“I thought it was strange how Facebook’s feed knew what I was looking to buy or was thinking of,” she said. “It was a breach of privacy. I used to use Facebook Messenger to call and be in touch with my family and friends, but there are better apps to use now for ­communicating.”

Lauren Solomon, the chief executive of the Melbourne-based Consumer Policy Research Centre, said many companies — not just Facebook — were adopting methods to mine user conversations in order to improve their products.

“At a basic level, most consumers are unaware that their data is also being shared with, or in this case listened to by, third parties, which consumers don’t have a ­direct relationship with,” she said.

“We’ve analysed numerous privacy policies over the past two years and it’s incredibly common to see opaque terminology, such as we’re ‘sharing with trusted partners’ and ‘with those we have a shared commercial interest’.”

A Facebook spokesman said other tech companies followed the same practices. “Much like Apple and Google, we paused human review of audio more than a week ago,” the company spokesman said.

While Facebook, Apple and Google have changed their behaviour, Microsoft this week amended its privacy policy and other pages to make it clear human workers were listening to recorded conversations and commands to improve the services.

The Irish Data Protection Commission is investigating whether the tech companies’ practices have breached EU rules.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner did not respond to ­requests for comment.