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Facebook is the quintessential social network, but you may not always feel like being social every time you log in to your Facebook account. Whether it's because you don't have the energy or the time to engage with friends, you do have the option to browse Facebook without anyone knowing you're online. The way to achieve this is by turning off your "Active Status," which can be done within...

Facebook has introduced a tool that lets users export notes and text-based posts to third-party services, making it easier than ever to leave the social network without saying goodbye to your content. The new "data portability types" mean people can now directly transfer their notes and posts to Google Docs, Blogger and WordPress. The updates are extensions to Facebook's existing tool that...

When it came to adding a Dark Mode option to its iOS app, Facebook was late to the game. The social network announced it was coming in June 2020, but dragged its feet for months before eventually rolling it out to mobile users in November the same year, over 400 days after Apple first introduced the feature in iOS 13. Dark Mode‌ has been available on the social network's website for a while ...

Facebook has just made a photo transfer tool globally available that lets account holders easily download all their pictures and videos from the social network to Google Photos. Previously, the majority of Facebook users wanting to download their media from the site had to do it manually. From today, however, users with a Google Photos account can automate the job, and Facebook says more...

After previously only existing as an "Easter Egg" setting, Facebook in April 2019 added a Dark Mode theme as an official display feature of its standalone Messenger app. Facebook says that Dark Mode is designed to provide less harsh brightness in situations where ambient lighting is lower while maintaining contrast and vibrancy. If you have an OLED iPhone, such as an iPhone X, iPhone XS,...

With the release of iOS 11, Apple nixed its built-in integration with Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and Vimeo, a feature that allowed iPhone and iPad users to store their third-party account information and access it within apps that needed to use those services. The equivalent feature remains in macOS High Sierra, although Apple has removed it completely from macOS 10.14 Mojave, which many...

Facebook will launch a new desktop app for Messenger on both macOS and Windows later this year, according to a since-deleted blog post spotted by French blog iGeneration ahead of Facebook's annual F8 developer conference. A screenshot of the Windows version of the app reveals that it will look rather similar to both Skype and Apple's own Messages app on Mac. Facebook said Messenger Desktop...

Back in March, Facebook announced that millions of Facebook passwords were stored on its servers in plain text with no encryption. At the time, Facebook also said that "tens of thousands" of Instagram passwords were also stored in the same unencrypted format, but as it turns out, the actual number was much, much higher. In an update to its original blog post, Facebook now says that millions of ...

Facebook harvested the email contacts of 1.5 million users without their knowledge or consent and used the data to build a web of their social connections, it emerged today. Business Insider reports that Facebook began collecting the contact lists in May 2016 when new users opened a new account on the social network. Image via Business Insider The harvesting occurred when users were offered...

Facebook's executive team, including Mark Zuckerberg, used the data of Facebook users as leverage over partner companies, according to leaked emails, webchats, presentations, spreadsheets, and more obtained by NBC News. More than 4,000 pages of leaked documents from 2011 to 2015 provide insight into how Facebook was taking advantage of user data while publicly promising to protect user privacy ...

Facebook will discontinue its peer-to-peer payments feature for Messenger users in the United Kingdom and France on June 15, the company announced on Tuesday (via TechCrunch). The social network sent out notices to users of the service in the two countries informing them of the decision, adding that they would continue to be able to make charitable donations through Facebook itself. A note...

Facebook today activated its Dark Mode feature, which has been available as an "Easter Egg" setting since early March. According to a blog post on Facebook's Messenger site, a ‌Dark Mode‌ toggle is rolling out globally starting today. ‌Dark Mode‌ can now be enabled by tapping on your profile photo in Messenger to get to the Messenger settings where ‌Dark Mode‌ is now an available option....

Eight years after separating its Messenger service into a standalone app, and five years after removing messaging functionality completely from the central app, Facebook might be gearing up to reintegrate Messenger into the main Facebook app (via The Verge). The news comes from app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who found a rudimentary "Chats" section in the Facebook mobile app. Whereas before...

Millions of Facebook records were found on publicly accessible Amazon's cloud servers by researchers at UpGuard, a cybersecurity firm, reports Bloomberg. The data was uploaded by third-party companies that work with Facebook. Mexico City-based media company Cultura Colectiva, for example, was storing 540 million records on Facebook users on Amazon's servers, offering up information that...

Facebook today announced that during a routine security review it discovered "some user passwords" were stored in a readable format within its internal data storage systems, accessible by employees. As it turns out, "some user passwords" actually means hundreds of millions of passwords. A Facebook insider told KrebsOnSecurity that between 200 and 600 million Facebook users may have had their...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg this morning penned a new missive outlining the company's plan to create a "privacy-focused messaging and social networking platform." Facebook's new privacy-focused platform, which will see its core apps overhauled, will, according to Facebook, be built around principles that include private interactions, end-to-end encryption, ephemeral messages, safety,...

Over the weekend, it was discovered that Facebook had hidden a "Dark Mode" toggle in the latest version of FaceBook Messenger. On Monday Facebook confirmed the release of the hidden feature but also promised a full roll out in the "coming weeks." Dark mode in Facebook Messenger can be enabled by sending a crescent moon emoji in Messenger. Facebook describes the process as "Simply send a ...

It's no secret that Facebook is harvesting incredible amounts of data on all of its users (and some that don't even use the service), but what may come as a surprise is just how detailed and intimate some of that data is. A report from The Wall Street Journal takes a look at some of the apps on iOS that provide data to Facebook, with that info then used for advertising purposes. Instant...

Facebook is no longer able to use or distribute important internal iOS apps after Apple disabled the Enterprise Certificate Facebook was abusing to surreptitiously gather data from iOS users right under Apple's nose. Since 2016, Facebook has been paying teens and adults $20 per month to install a data gathering "Facebook Research" app that harvested all kinds of sensitive details from...

Facebook has said it will end a controversial market research program in which the company paid users to install a mobile app that tracked their activity and data. In a statement given to TechCrunch and other websites, the company said that its "Facebook Research" app, which paid volunteers between the ages of 13 and 35 up to $20 a month to access nearly all their data, would no longer be...

Apple in August 2018 forced Facebook to remove its Onavo VPN app from the App Store, because Facebook was using it to track user activity and data across multiple apps, something that violate's Apple's ‌App Store‌ policies. As it turns out, Facebook has found an underhanded way to skirt Apple's rules and get people to continue installing its VPN -- paying them. TechCrunch this afternoon...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is planning to integrate three disparate messaging services -- Facebook Messenger, Instagram messaging, and WhatsApp -- into one "underlying messaging infrastructure" (via The New York Times). Facebook Messenger These services will continue to operate as their own standalone apps, but the company's work will make them interoperable with one another. This means...

Facebook has revealed plans to start testing a way for users to "share the events" they are interested in and "coordinate to meet up with friends" using its Stories feature, according to The Verge. The test will roll out to Facebook users on iPhone and Android smartphones in the United States, Brazil, and Mexico. The report outlines how the feature will work:The stories will come with...

Apple has recruited a former Facebook employee who went on to become one of the social network's most ardent critics, reports The Financial Times (paywall). Sandy Parakilas monitored the privacy and policy compliance of Facebook developers for 18 months before leaving the social network in 2012. Sandy Parakilas talking to Bloomberg During his time at the company, Parakilas felt his concerns ...

If you've noticed Facebook continuing to deliver location-based ads even with all location services disabled, you're not alone, and that's because Facebook continues to use data like your IP address to determine your location for ad delivery purposes. Facebook's lack of an option to disable location tracking for ad targeting was highlighted in a Medium post shared today by Aleksandra Korolova, ...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday singled out Apple's iMessage mobile messaging service as Facebook's "biggest competitor by far." (via CNBC). The comments were made to investors during an earnings call for the company's third quarter performance, in which the Facebook CEO admitted the social platform was losing out to iMessage in "important" territories like the U.S., where iPhone sales ...