All entries tagged with “viber”
Posted by Yasmin Parsloe on Wednesday Aug 6, 2014 9:36 am
Fewer than one in 10 people read the terms of services of new applications. This is if Facebook didn’t recently announce that all users are being forced to download the standalone Messenger App in order to send or receive messages on mobile devices. Following Facebook’s emotion manipulation study – users are now questioning their personal security when connecting with friend’s on the social network.
When you download the new Messenger app – you must select to agree with the Terms & Conditions of the install. Here are a few of those permission you are granting the service:
- You are allowing the app to call phone numbers without your discretion. This may result in unexpected charges or calls.
- You are allowing the app to send SMS messages. This may result in unexpected charges.
- You are giving the app permission to record audio with the microphone on your phone without you knowing.
- You are also allowing the app to take pictures and videos using the camera of your phone without giving you notice.
- You are also giving the app access to your personal profile information stored on your device such as your name and contact information.
Among other information the app can access on your mobile device: your call log, SMS text messages, contact data and emails.
Report: It would take you the average person 250 working hours per year to read every terms of service he encounters daily.

This sudden awareness of policies and terms of service follows Facebook’s 2012 psychological experiment where Facebook altered the number of positive and negative posts seen on more than 700,000 users’ newsfeeds finding that less positive words would lead to more negative posts. The manipulation of data lead Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, to admit that Facebook “communicated poorly” about the study.
It is important to note Facebook Messenger is not the first freestanding app to pose such requests. Using any messenger app, including WhatsApp, Viber, MessageMe, are likely to have similar permissions.
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