Why You Shouldn’t Use Facebook Home If You Have Privacy Concerns

Facebook is launching its new Home on Android today. Unfortunately, the app is only available to a select few devices. If you have anything but a flagship device from HTC or Samsung, or if your phone is more than a year old, you can’t try Home yet. What you can do is update your Facebook and Facebook messenger apps, which make some pieces of the Home experience more widely available.

The messenger update is pretty straightforward. “Chat Heads”, little notification bubbles that display the profile picture of whoever you’re chatting with, are now part of the app. You can use the Heads to view and reply to a message without leaving the app you’re in, ignore the small movable bubble until you’re ready to deal with it, or even dismiss the conversation entirely by tossing it off the bottom of the screen.

The update to the main Facebook app, on the other hand, is more problematic. Essentially, this newest version lets Facebook see every app you use on your phone. I’m not a developer, but I read what permissions my apps are asking for before I install them, and I’ve never heard of this one before. It’s a level of intrusiveness I only accept from Google because it’s the cost of using an Android phone. Same goes for my carrier and handset manufacturer (though I limit that to where I can get by using custom ROMs). There are few companies I would trust with that level of personal information, and Facebook certainly isn’t on the list.

Bear in mind, none of this is actually Facebook Home. This is just what the existing Facebook app on Android supposedly needs for Home to function properly. That seems excessive, given that most Android users won’t even have access to Home itself (which, conveniently, requires no special permissions of its own). This is a naked grab for personal information from all of Facebook’s Android users, in the name of making a simple launcher work properly.

I, for one, won’t be using Home or the Facebook app as long as Facebook requires this much access to my personal usage habits for access. Facebook for Android is pretty terrible anyway, so I might as well use the mobile website. I can’t recommend that anyone use the app until this permission is removed.