Huawei stores our information on phone, not on servers: Facebook
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee in a statement said House of Representatives Intelligence Committee had raised concerns
Mark Zuckerberg-ledFacebook which was hit by a data breach scandal recently, said today that Chinese phone makers weregiven access to data on users.
"Facebook along with many other US tech companies have worked with them and other Chinese manufacturers to integrate their services onto these phones," Facebook mobile partnerships leader Francisco Varela said in a statement.
The social network said it would end the agreement with Huawei later this week including three other partnerships with Chinese firms. Members of Congress had raised concern over data of users' friends could have been accessed without their explicit consent. Facebook denied it would happen.
"Given the interest from Congress, we wanted to make clear that all the information from these integrations with Huawei was stored on the device, not on Huawei's servers," it said.
US intelligence officials have maintained that Chinese phones allow foreign espionage and therefore are a threat to national security. The Pentagon had earlier ordered retail outlets on US military bases to stop selling Huawei and ZTE phones, citing potential security risks.
Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee in a statement said House of Representatives Intelligence Committee had raised concerns about Huawei dating back in 2012.
"The news that Facebook provided privileged access to Facebook's API to Chinese device makers like Huawei and TCL raises legitimate concerns, and I look forward to learning more about how Facebook ensured that information about their users was not sent to Chinese servers," Warner said.
Facebook had earlier revealed 87 million users' account was hacked after a UK-based firm Cambridge Analytica was accused of harvesting Facebook data.
New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood said the "data-sharing partnerships with other corporations" is part of the ongoing investigation into the reported misuse of Facebook user data by Cambridge Analytica.