Didn't give firms access to users' data without their permission: Facebook

The company said these partners got access to messages but users "had to explicitly sign in to Facebook first" before using a partner's messaging feature

Facebook Inc said it did not give some companies access to people's data without their permission, after the New York Times reported on Tuesday that the social network allowed some large technology companies greater access to user data.

The paper reported that Facebook allowed Microsoft's Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users' friends without their consent, citing documents from 2017.

"None of these partnerships or features gave companies access to information without people's permission, nor did they violate our 2012 settlement with the FTC," Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Facebook's director of developer platforms and programs, said