Facebook (Photo : REUTERS/Dado Ruvic)
Amid heightened concerns about the privacy of social media in the face of government scrutiny into terrorist activities online, a report has surfaced that a company backed by the United States government is monitoring private chat messages on Facebook.
The revelation, which was made by the Bosnadev-Code Factory, is reported to have come about accidentally. According to a Bosnadev blog post, a group of developers were attempting to test a new application that was being developed when they sent a link for the app via Facebook chat and noticed that the IP address was unusual, Sputnik News reported.
In order to verify their concerns, the developers reportedly sent another link - one that had not been posted publicly - via Facebook private chat. The result was the same; some strange Internet Protocol tags appeared with the link.
Upon tracing the Internet Protocol tags, Bosnadev developers found out that they belonged to an American-Swedish company known as Recorded Future. Tech Times reported that Recorded Future is involved in analyzing terrorist threats by scanning through information posted on the internet. According to Bosnadev, the company has the backing of Google, as well as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA).
The privacy of social media interactions have been a subject of public debate for some years now. Facebook and other social media companies have repeatedly insisted that the messages sent on their platforss are private - unless they are made public by users.
Since this revelation, Facebook has released a statement saying that it has not "partnered with or directed Recorded Future to scan anyone's messages links." The statement, which noted that Facebook is investigating the report, also suggested that "another interaction, including one that could be occurring on the client machine, is consuming the URL and generating this behavior."
Meanwhile, Recorded Future has also released a statement to deny accessing private Facebook messages. "Our system followed this URL after it was posted on a public site. Our system constantly explores links published on the web. We've checked our log and confirmed that this is what happened in this particular case."
